The Creative Principle
by Folk Devil
Summary: A very different post-3rd Impact story. Shinji and Asuka, still scarred and emotionally fragile, try desperately to salvage some kind of life together. The Feds, hell bent on punishing those that destroyed the old world, reopen old wounds by dragging them into a trial they want no part in. Meanwhile, a shadow forms on the horizon, threatening to sweep everything away once again.
1. Chapter 1 - Talya Koum

**STANDARD FORM DISCLAIMER:** The following is a fan-written derivative work of _**NEON GENESIS EVANGELION**_. The author ("I") claims(s) no copyright, explicit or implicit to any unoriginal character contained herein. Furthermore, I disclaim any and all copyright to any Original Characters ("OCs") appearing in this work. I gain absolutely no profit from this venture, and am entitled to none. This disclaimer will not appear on any subsequent chapters, however, it should be considered to apply with equal force to them. For any further inquiries, please contact me via a private message to this account.

 **THE CREATIVE PRINCIPLE**

CHAPTER ONE: TALYA KOUM

 _"Lay upon the sinner his sin,_

 _Lay upon the transgressor his transgression,_

 _Punish him a little when he breaks loose,_

 _Do not drive him too hard or he perishes._

 _Would that a lion had ravaged mankind,_

 _rather than the Flood._

 _Would that a famine had wasted the world,_

 _rather than the Flood._

 _Would that pestilence had wasted mankind,_

 _rather than the flood."_

 _-The Epic of Gilgamesh_

 **SHINJI**

He killed Kaworu again that night, as he did every night. The scene played out slightly different every time. Sometimes it was close to how it went for real. He would sit in his crash-couch, as he did in life, holding him for a while before giving the mental command to his Eva to crush him. He would feel his skinny body break, his bones shatter, and his core rupture. Shinji knew Kaworu was an angel, but he died like a boy every time.

Sometimes, instead, Shinji would float in the air somewhere and watch as Unit 1 crushed Kaworu. That was slightly better. He didn't have to feel his organs rupture, he didn't have to feel blood coat the inside of his giant biomechanical hand; he only had to see it, as if he were a spectator. Those dreams, he could almost live with. Almost.

The worst, though, were the pseudo-psychedelic journeys into hell that plagued him with increasing frequency. There was usually little to no coherent imagery, just flashes of things, sometimes entirely unrelated, but an all pervading _sense_ that he was killing him. He did not relieve Kaworu's death so much as the overwhelming sense of loss and guilt that went with it. And that terrified him.

Kaworu's blood, once an idea but now an image, morphed as if by some perverse transubstantiation into semen. Shinji was over _her_ now, once again in the hospital, long since covered by an ocean, violating her as he did every night. In her silence, she screamed. The silent scream turned real: " _Don't rape my mind!"_ Suddenly Shinji _was_ Arael. Suddenly _he,_ or He, was the one probing deep into her mind relentlessly. NERV never actually told them the secret names of the Angels: Kabbalah was out of their pay grade. But somehow, here in the dream, he knew it. By the time he awoke, he would forget, as he did always.

Now, he was falling off a tower, or maybe a tree or a cliff. It didn't matter which, and it changed several times. He had jumped consciously, but he wasn't trying to kill himself. It wasn't that kind of dream. Shinji hit the ground, and his body broke. He knew that he had died on impact, but his body was still conscious. His living corpse was on the Beach back in what was left of Japan, lying next to Asuka. Voices came to him from nowhere in particular.

"Pick yourself up." said Misato.

"I can't."

"Pick yourself up." ordered Asuka.

"I can't."

" _Pick yourself up."_ willed Ayanami.

"I can't."

" _Have you learned nothing?"_

He woke with a start, his entire body shaking, his breathing laboured and shallow. His stomach inflated and hollowed out arhythmically as he attempted to calm himself down. Asuka woke and grabbed him immediately, cradling him in his arms, cooing something soft and calming into his ear. He had no idea what or for how long.

This was routine.

"S-sorry." He said, between breaths. He felt weak, as if he were about to die. "I had a-another one."

"It's okay… just relax." She said, in an attempt at calming him. Her voice was soft but underlying it was a vague sense of panic, that it wouldn't work this time, that he would _never_ calm down. There was no haughtiness, no dig at him or attempt at humour here - never during an episode. Their relationship was complex to say the least, but in situations like this there was no place for anything but absolute support. This was their most iron law. That, and never mention the hospital and _never_ mention the beach.

After a few more moments of desperate cuddling, Shinji's breath finally began to slow down. His nerves were still on edge, but his heart no longer felt liable to explode. "Sorry." He said, again. There was no better word to use here.

He traced his fingers over her arms, stopping at the jagged scars on her wrists. Every scar from the battle with the Mass Production Evas had faded away to almost nothing, as if by magic. Even the eye, which had ruptured in the fight, was more or less perfect in terms of aesthetics, even if she was mostly blind in it. Apparently LCL had regenerative properties far beyond the natural ability to heal. But the scars she gave herself remained. There was probably something poetic in that.

"Your hands are like ice." she said.

He kissed her on the forehead and reached over her into the nightstand. In passing, he noted that the digital clock read 5:55 AM. Fumbling with the drawer, he retrieved a small bottle of generic diazepam. He popped one of the chalky pills in his mouth. After an instant of second guessing, he downed another.

"You're addicted to that shit." She said, all too frankly, in English this time, wrapping her arms around him.

"As if you never take any." He said, digging at her without really refuting her claim. He was, in fact, dependent on it, but he really couldn't think of any other solution in the short term. It was (probably) better that than booze, which he avoided knowing, without needing to try it, that he would like it too much.

"I haven't had a panic attack in like a month," she lied, "And I've only popped one Valium since then. Doctor says you're only supposed to only take it when you need it, it's not candy."

"And I don't need it right now?"

"You do, so take it. Just… try to cut down, okay? For me?"

He didn't give a response. Anything he said would either be a lie or would piss her off. They were more and more like an old couple every day. This was despite the fact that Shinji had only just turned 19. Asuka would still be 18 for another three months.

"Are you going to stay in bed?" she asked.

"No, I… I should get up. I can't sleep."

"We don't have to sleep…" she said, her voice a bit coy.

"Not now, Asuka. I'm sorry, I just… I can't" _There's that phrase again._ "Not after _that_."

"Are you sure? It might make you feel better."

"Trust me, it won't, not now at least."

"Fine. You owe me one though. I'm going back to sleep. I gotta get some work done on my thesis today."

"The monkeys are ready to be lobotomized?" he said, switching back to Japanese.

" _Baka!_ If you imply I'm as dumb as a neuropsyche pleb again I'll castrate you."

"I'm talking about your students." The off-brand valium was starting to kick in, he could hold a conversation again! He could joke again!

" _You_ try to explain the Akagi theorem to a bunch of idiots educated in public school – _American_ public school." She said, as if she were describing a particularly impacted cyst. "It's a new semester so I have to start that shit all over again with a new group of _children._ "

"You're younger than most of them."

"So that means they have no excuse. I mastered this stuff before I could tie my shoes."

"Maybe you should go easy on them this time. I looked at your professor review page. You're not particularly popular…"

"Only thing I care about on that shitty site is if I have a chilli pepper. Last time I checked, I do, so screw 'em. And don't you dare tell me how to do my job till you get one, _Baka_." She said in in English. Except _baka,_ she liked the sound of that word too much to translate it.

"I… we went over this!" Shinji said, in no mood for _this_ conversation again. "It's not like we need the money, the NERV checks keep coming in."

"It's not about the money. You can't just sit here all day doing nothing."

"I'm writing the book…"

" _Suuure_. And how many pages have you written so far? At least teach some Japanese or something on the side, or maybe teach some English to the refugees. Help your people out."

"They're your people too, Asuka. And besides, I don't think I'd make a good teacher."

"First of all, I'm a world-baby. Who _isn't_ my people? And how hard could it be? I taught _you_ how to speak English and you're dense as hell."

"I already spoke some English before I met you…"

"Trust me," she said, "You didn't. I'd show you what you sounded like but you'd just call me racist. _Again._ "

Normality. A normal conversation. Some relief. He shoved the dreams in the back of his mind, hoping in vain that they would never trouble him again.

"Anyway, I'm tired, so if you don't want to screw me at least let me sleep. Get up or don't, just shut up for a while." She yawned loudly. "You threw the sheets on the floor and it's freezing in here! When's the landlord going to fix the heat?", she grumbled, as she let go of him to gather up the fallen linens.

"I'll ask him again later. I might be gone by the time you get up for work. You want anything while I'm out?"

"Some fucking sanity." She deadpanned, already back in her sleeping position.

"They're running low on that, I heard, so don't get your hopes up. Want anything else?"

"We're almost out of soy sauce."

* * *

Slowly, their relationship had evolved from a confused and awkward jumble of conflicting feelings, violence, and absolute sexual confusion to something slightly more comprehensible. There were a lot of tears involved, a lot of hellish nights with no privacy in a sweaty refugee camp in the middle of god forsaken flyover state. They were almost institutionalized, split up, probably never to see each other again.

Their issues were far from resolved, of course. But the wounds were too painful, and their co-dependent relationship was too important to be staked by scratching the wounds. The beach was _verboten_. The hospital was _verboten_ (to Shinji's immense relief). Third Impact, and what the hell happened in there, was definitely _verboten._ The angels, especially the 15th, and of course Kaworu, were touchy subjects, rarely discussed, and only in whispers or, occasionally, screams. Asuka still had occasional breakdowns. Now at least, she could, with the help of psychiatric chemistry manage them. Asuka still swore, often loudly, that talk therapy was a scam. She still went. Shinji was… more fragile, and on a far heavier cocktail of drugs than she was. Both of them knew, somehow, that they would have to talk about these things _eventually_ , but both knew that it would probably be too painful to bear.

They were technically married, but it didn't really feel like a marriage. They were too young. In truth, it was mostly a scam to get Shinji citizenship – Asuka had a US passport after all - and out of the JRRI (the Japanese Refugee and Resettlement Initiative) camp. It was distressingly common at this point, and already there were calls in Congress to close the loophole. In what was becoming a family tradition, Shinji had taken Asuka's name (specifically the Japanese one, Sohryu. Shinji felt weird about 'Langley,' a name he could never really pronounce properly in its English version.) It wasn't for any ideological reason, but to be named "Shinji Ikari" nowadays was like being called "John Hitler." It just wasn't a good idea.

Their marriage was more real than most, though. They at least loved each other, even if their definition of 'love' was nonstandard, to say the least. She could have left at any time, gone to live anywhere in America, or back to Germany to find her father, but she didn't. She stayed with him in the camp, despite claiming (at least at first) to despise him. She did little but cry for the first few months or so. But gradually, she changed back into Asuka. That was good. They had been through hell together, they had seen _inside_ each other's minds. There was something profoundly sacred about their bond: Shinji could not see himself with another woman, under any circumstances. None of them could know him as well as Asuka. He was certain no one but she could love him. It was the only bright spot in his life.

Still, the marriage had practical advantages as well. Many of Shinji's countrymen weren't in anywhere near as good a position. Of the United States 50 million new residents fleeing the now-uninhabitable islands of Japan, most were still confined to the Jerry Camps. Japan was gone as a nation: the blackened, shattered remains of the Home Islands couldn't grow food or support life. The only ones there were UN aid agencies combing the lands for an ever dwindling number of Returnees. The vast majority of Japanese that had survived what was called in America "2I" and "3I" picked the US, which was largely untouched by the disasters. The rest either scraped out a living in Hokkaido, which was still apparently liveable though not "Japanese" anymore, as it was under direct UN control, paid to go somewhere else, died, or didn't come back, continuing to exist somewhere out there in Instrumentality.

The aim was to integrate them gradually, with the least "impact to American society" possible. Any troubling comparisons to a certain World War 2 era practice involving the same ethnic group were conveniently forgotten.

They had 'married' by unceremoniously signing paperwork in front of a bored federal clerk in a conference/ping pong room at JRRI "Temporary Settlement" 2181 in Kootenai County, Idaho on December 5th, 2019, exactly one day after Asuka's 18th birthday. There were eight other couples behind them, waiting in line. By that point they had been dating (such as it was) for two years and having sex for three. That same day, they had their walking papers and were checked into the only motel nearby for a (admittedly hot) 'honeymoon.'

No one, especially the refugees spoke of the Third Impact, especially Instrumentality. It was the taboo of taboos. That is, except for the cults, which were popping up in the camps at an alarming pace. They talked about it at any opportunity. There were a lot of cults which had formed in the wake of the Third Impact, especially on the dead and desolate West Coast, which had been almost entirely wiped out.

By Shinji.

Technically, all of those souls were still in sight, in that new horrible red constellation of souls that orbited the world, or in the sea. Occasionally, someone would return from the sea, either to be reunited with their families or to find out that their families were all dead. Many of The Returned (a stupid title, as technically _everyone_ was Returned), killed themselves within a few months of coming back. There were fewer people returning every year. Eventually, it was expected that people would stop coming back all together.

Within a month of leaving the camps, the couple was settled in South Boston. Apparently it had been a mostly Irish neighborhood for a century and a half, but a growing number of Japanese immigrants (including Shinji and Asuka) had begun to set up there since the Third Impact due to its relatively low housing prices. The natives weren't exactly pleased about it. They lived in a tiny duplex bungalow which they rented for fairly cheap. Though they had only lived there for six months, they had had three different neighbors, none of whom they knew at all. They didn't know anyone, really. They had no real friends, and they certainly didn't get out much: Asuka went to work, Shinji did the grocery shopping. In truth, the two of them were as lonely as ever, but at least now they could be lonely together.

Asuka enrolled at MIT, which she commuted to each day, finishing her Masters in Metaphysical Field Theory in eight months. Around the same time got a job teaching First and Second year Metaphysical Biology, which according to Asuka was a 'fad' subject because it was in the news a lot.

They lived cheaply off of Asuka's rather meager associate professor salary and the "don't sue us" checks from the various shell corporations that handled NERV's finances, which were obscenely large. Shinji hated the money. He wanted to either donate all of it, or just burn the checks un-cashed, but Asuka forbade him.

This was the source of most of their arguments. They got heated at times. Eventually, they arrived at a sort of compromise. All of the checks to Shinji would go into an account, only to be accessed if (to quote Asuka: "big fucking if,") they had children. Asuka's checks were hers. She splurged at first; buying a cherry red pre-Impact Mercedes with a vanity license plate (UNI-2JR, pronounced "Unit 02 Junior"). Eventually, guilt made her dump most of it into the account as well. For his part, Shinji drove a beige 1998 Honda Civic, with miscolored doors. He did it both out of an inherent cheapness and the _slightest_ tinge of nationalism. He drove it rarely, gas was at a premium, now a days.

Few knew of their significance to world history. There were a few stares of recognition, after all, everyone in the world had seen their faces at least once, but memories of Instrumentality were vague and not to be trusted and certainly never to be discussed openly. Even the cultists that worshiped them would never recognize them in the flesh. Instrumentality memories were vague.

The world seemed eager to forget it even happened. The absolute environmental and human disaster caused by it created far too many pressing issues to worry about the past anymore. Everyone was slightly battle hardened: those that did not lose someone in the Third Impact lost someone in the Second, or the wars that followed it. Even twenty years later, the streets of America were still packed with maimed and disfigured war veterans from the Third World War, just after the Second Impact, their minds often broken. Shinji was shocked at this. They never seemed to be around in Japan. Or maybe he just never noticed them.

He sat at low coffee table drinking coffee and eating some kind of bread-y thing he didn't know the name of. The water for the coffee was filtered, tap water was still unsafe. With it, he took a veritable cocktail of prescription anti-depressants: Lithium and Zoloft (which apparently could cause hallucinations when taken together, his shrink never mentioned that, luckily none had manifested yet), Paxil. He contemplated another Valium, but he was numb already, so he decided against it. At night, he took Prazosin to cut down on the nightmares. They didn't seem to help much. _Maybe I should schedule another appointment to up the dose?_

The sun was just starting to come up. It was still summer, but fall was threatening to take over any day now. It would be a cold winter, there was already frost on the ground. It was September 3rd, the first day of school for children. It was weird, but there was a part of Shinji that was eager to see a school bus for real. They didn't have them in Japan, but growing up they were always on the periphery of the culture, in the American movies.

The TV was on, at low volume so as not to disturb Asuka. Shinji was only half listening. The English still gave him trouble when they talked fast, but over time he was getting better at it. Asuka was not a slow talker. "…Kozo Fuyutski, the apparent second in command at NERV, declined to comment. Fuyutski was directly below Gendo Ikari, who is presumed dead or Unreturned, in the NERV hierarchy. Legal analysts are already calling his trial the most important of the Ottawa Trials to be convened so far. The Ottawa trials are set to be the largest war crimes tribunal since Nuremberg. Seven other high ranking NERV officials: First Lieutenants Maya Ibuki, Shigeru Aoba, and Makato Hyuga, as well as chief financial officer of the Berlin branch..."

He shut the TV off. The Ottawa trials were the bane of his existence, and he didn't want to hear about them so soon after a major panic attack. They were rounding up anyone remotely connected to NERV that they found washed up on a beach somewhere. They had been trying to get Shinji and Asuka to be witnesses for years. In the camps, they had offered him citizenship, a way out. Shinji told him that that part of his life was over, and that he wanted nothing to do with any of it. Asuka felt the same way. On this he was steadfast. He would not testify. It wasn't that he particularly cared about anyone on trial, hell, most of them deserved to be punished. But Shinji was done with that life. He wanted to tell his own story his own way. Hence, Shinji's planned autobiography, which was sitting perpetually unfinished on a cheap laptop charging on the counter next to the coffee maker.

The bastards were insistent, though. And as the trial grew ever nearer, the US had been calling more and more regularly, trying desperately to convince them to testify. No matter what Shinji would not be their pawn. Never.

Suddenly, a bird hit the window, breaking his reverie. It shocked Shinji, sending his already skittish mind into overdrive, causing him let out a small yelp. He hoped Asuka hadn't heard. From the sound of it, it must've been massive, large enough to rattle the window. There were tiny, downy feathers still plastered to the outside. It must've hit with some force.

Slowly, Shinji rose and went outside. He was barefoot, and the frost on the grass in their tiny front lawn chilled bottom of his feet. He spotted the bird under their window immediately: it wasn't a pigeon or a songbird, but some kind of bird of prey, not quite as large as an eagle. It was probably a falcon or something.

Shinji crouched down and cradled it in its arms gently. It was alive, just barely, its wings obviously broken in several places. It was beautiful, proud looking. Something was _wrong_ about it laying here, broken. Somehow, it reminded him of Asuka in her darkest moments. Shinji was at a loss of what to do. The bird made a pitiful noise; it was clearly in immense pain. He tried to stroke its feathers, to calm it, but it began to tremble.

Suddenly, a pang of panic hit Shinji in the pit of his stomach. The bird could not be saved, that much was clear. But should he be the one to put the poor thing out of its misery? It would be quick and easy, just a quick twist of the neck. Images of Kaworu flooded to his mind, and Asuka, on the beach. He thought that was a mercy killing too:

" _You were just lying there… I thought you wanted to…"_

" _I did."_

His tears fell on the ground, melting the frost. He couldn't do it. Even if it was the right thing, he just… couldn't do it.

"I'm sorry." He said, in Japanese. It didn't matter what language he spoke to a bird, did it? "I hope you understand. I can't." He laid it back on the ground. It tried to move its wings, but it couldn't. It stopped shaking. Something in its eyes seemed resigned. The animal knew death was close.

 _Have you learned nothing?_

Shinji went back inside. He contemplated crawling back in bed, he could really use Asuka's warmth right now, but instead he sat back down, trying to stifle the horrible feelings welling up in him. The coffee was cold.

When he checked the spot he left the bird later on, it was gone. Part of him liked to believe it had somehow gotten away, and, against all odds, survived. But he had seen a stray tabby cat prowling around a few days before. The little bastard probably got it.

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

So, here we go, the first chapter my first real (published) Fanfiction. I've been trying to write this shit for a year now, and finally, _finally_ it's gotten to a state where I think I'm ready to put something out there. As you can no doubt tell by having suffered through that, I'm still remarkably new at this. So be it.

I will, however, need some help. First of all, a second (or third, etc) set of eyes is EXTREMELY valuable for this sort of thing. If you want to help me with this through editing, or hell, even just talking about the story, send me a message. I'm really worried that there are significant structural/pacing issues with this. Also, reviews will help. I'd say be constructive in your criticism, but all criticism is constructive. Once I wrote a fanfic in a different fandom under a different name. I was much younger and much stupider. Then, I saw it on a list of "worst fanfictions in [INSERT FANDOM HERE]." That, for awhile, wrecked my confidence, but you know what? They were _right,_ goddamn it! I've made a conscious effort to avoid that this time around. I don't need to be the best, I just don't want to be the worst.

Also, a few points of order: there _will_ be OCs. I tried to avoid bringing any in the first chapter because really who cares about these non-established assholes, right, but they are integral as supporting characters. They're living in a new country, after all. Don't worry, I'm trying to avoid Sueism like the plague. The OCs are non-typical for this genre:

For example, in the next chapter we'll be meeting the sixth child who is named "Darkstar." He's SUPER COOL and he can fight BETTER THAN ANYBODY and he also has a BLACK AND GREEN EVANGELION. He's also a hedgehog with that listens to metal core and often quotes Linkin Park...

I'm kidding. If you thought that I could be serious, then that means I've already failed.

Also, I always found Post-3I stories weird where NERV is established again 2 months later, and for some reason they're still doing synch tests and shit. I'm trying to give the impression of a partially destroyed, semi-post apocalyptic world (America got off comparatively easy) with the illusion of normality glommed over top of it. How am I doing with that? Does it need to be more, like, _desolate_ sounding, or do you get the idea?

I'm willing to edit this chapter a bit if I need to, since we're still early in the process and things aren't quite as solid yet as they will be once more chapters are out. If you see anything particularly egregious, hit me up early (except for spelling/grammar/formatting, for that contact me any time, even if it's like 10 years in the future) so I can get them taken care of. That's not a guarantee I'll change anything, but I'll at least take it into consideration.

Anyway, until next time:

-Folk Devil

 **UPDATE, JUNE 7, 2015** : Just a minor edit in this chapter, I think I jumped the gun and revealed something a bit too early. Just two or three sentences were cut out, and replaced by something else. For my small gaggle of readers, you'll probably know why immediately next chapter. For everyone else, who might be reading this months or even years from now, trust me, it was for the best.

Also, new chapter almost done. The writing is basically complete, and the editing will only take a few days. Watch for it this week, I'm guessing probably by Thursday or Friday.


	2. Chapter 2 - Nechistye Sily

" _This is the evil that is older than humanity, but is reflected in our children's eyes. The evil we can't grasp, cannot punish, cannot destroy. The evil that contaminates souls as well as bodies, nations as well as people … the sinister forces that rule the world of our dreams, our nightmares, and our sober, trembling reality."_

-Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces

CHAPTER 2: NECHISTYE SILY

 **JACK LAFFEY**

2 YEARS EARLIER…

PASADENA, FEBRUARY 28, 2018

There was a weird sort of storm churning in the air, turning the sky pinkish red, nearly blotting out the sun and inculcating everything with a sort of latent electricity. It was potential energy, something was about to explode. Those that still lived here were huddled up inside, hiding from the dust, which was being blown in massive westward gusts coming in from the Mojave. In SoCal they called these the Santa Ana winds, a name that had nothing to do with Saint Anne, the biblical mother of Mary. It was a minced oath, a corruption of the original Spanish term for it: _los vientos Satana_. Even today, the old folks from San Diego to San Bernadino, from Barstow to the sea, called these _Devil Winds_.

That is, they would, if they were still alive.

Since Third Impact, Devil Winds were far more common than they used to be: after all, LA was a desert city now. In any other era, LA would be called post-Apocalyptic, before the term had ceased to be something thrown around lightly. Its population had dropped by more than 90 percent since the Second Impact, leaving rows upon rows of empty suburban housing, occupied mostly by a weird mix of refugees from the uninhabitable zones of the world fresh out of the Jerry, Cherry, Perry or Kerry camps, placed there by uncaring or overworked social workers, to eke out an existence somehow, and the destitute and abandoned of America: the druggies, the gangsters, and the often mutilated, scarred and traumatized veterans of the Third World War. Why these people came back from their aquatic afterlife no one knew. Jack certainly didn't. The cults told him you _chose_ to come back. If that was true, Jack Laffey had a serious case of buyer's remorse.

He drove through the abandoned streets of Pasadena, a former rocket town turned into an abandoned hellhole by war and neglect, seemingly possessed, the windshield wipers of his shitty beater of a pickup truck found abandoned in the Disneyland parking lot six months ago working overtime, struggling to wipe away the incessant dust. This storm was worse than usual. At times, the truck threatened to flip. It didn't help that he was slightly intoxicated on a number of substances. He had managed to find some meth after all this morning. _A sign of God's favour?_

Pasadena was not alone, all of LA and most of the surrounding cities from the Mexican border to just south of San Jose were empty. LA was hit hardest. The centre of the city was completely irradiated from a nuke, either Chinese or Russian (though there were, of course, the usual 'false flag' conspiracy theories…) launched just a few days before the Valentine treaty was signed. It was, somehow, the only American target hit, killing the majority of the pre-Impact city. Five million civilian casualties may sound bad, but when compared with India, Bangladesh and Pakistan's combined one and a half billion dead, it barely even registered.

The water that did exist here was largely irradiated and undrinkable, but even that sort of water was rare these days. Without the constant maintenance of the aqua-ducts and the massive post Second Impact climate change that afflicted the entire Pacific Rim, LA was turned into a sun-baked hell-scape, its lush lawns and golf courses rendered into not even a memory. Those that survived the Impact, the war, and the Aftermath fled eastward, Steinbeck style. Except this time, they did so in reverse. Men like Jack were the Muleys of the new world, graveyard ghosts left to slowly go insane.

Half the buildings Jack passed on his now were caved in, half collapsed after years of neglect and the near constant desert winds. They had long since been stripped of anything value. Copper wire and methamphetamine were the only two exports of value from this part of the world these days. That and old studio memorabilia, shipped out to East Coast museums to be gawked at by a generation that viewed Hollywood as a relic of a better time, and not a physical place. The famous sign was somewhere in Kentucky now, the hills where they once stood were bare.

Access to the East Coast, the most liveable region of the United States, was severely restricted for west coasters. Once you were in California, you couldn't leave California, legally at least. And crossing the Mojave was suicide these days, as it was nearly three times the size as it was in the pre-war era, stretching all the way to the Rockies in the west and San Francisco, which was technically still part of California's habitable zone, in the North.

Aside from that, California was a doomed land in a much more literal way. Geologists said that any day now the San Andreas Fault, hanging by the weakest of threads after two Global Impacts and several nuclear detonations, would let go, causing the whole irradiated mess of a city to slip into the Pacific like the doomsayers had been predicting for years, even before the wars and the Impacts. Everything in SoCal, therefore, was doomed to a watery grave, probably sooner rather than later. There were no evacuation plans. Anyone who lived here would go down with the state. That was fine for most, nobody who lived here cared much about living anyway.

That suited Jack just fine. He hadn't cared much about living since the Battle of the Dnieper. He was the only one in his unit to survive, somehow, not for any particular reason, but through pure luck. Or maybe the Will of God. No matter. That God was dead. His mind was already on the afterlife.

He had, of course, been bitter for years, especially when it was revealed that that the Second Impact was caused by that bastard Ikari, but since he had numbed himself to the pain. It wasn't worth thinking about. At least, that's what he told himself.

The biker meth he was high on was of absolute shit quality. Materials were harder to find, and their production standards had been slipping recently, and most meth was adulterated to hell. No matter, Jack was glad to have it. He hadn't been able to find for nearly three days. Since 2I and the wars following it, Jack had been addicted to a cocktail of different recreational substances, ranging from opiates, which he took daily just to keep the itch at bay and to keep the constant migraines left from the concussion he suffered in the war from driving him to suicide, to amphetamines, to keep him awake, and tub-brewed tequila, (agave was all they could get to make booze now-a-days) to keep him from thinking too much.

The booze, which he _did_ have in plentiful supply, the drugs, the dust, and newfound religious fervour caused him to drive erratically. He swerved, serpentine, across the dividing line, barely dodging the abandoned cars that lined the streets. No traffic, thank God. No harm, no fowl. Occasionally he would let out a short yelp in a sort of mad ecstasy. In spite of everything, Jack was in a state of euphoria. Today was the day he finally committed. Today was the day he finally drank the damn thing.

He pulled up to his place of worship, an abandoned Daycare or Elementary school of some sort, taken over by squatters belonging to the Tenshido Temple of Final Salvation faith, a radical breakaway group of The True Tenshido Revelation Church, itself a breakaway from the Southern California Tenshido Ecumenical Council of Churches, which was _itself_ a poor attempt at regulating and organizing the various folk religious practices that had arisen in the seedier Jerry camps among the rabble of shell-shocked and frightened Japanese refugees. The worship of the Chosen Children. The New Trinity.

Few remembered Instrumentality, and among those that did, did so to varying degrees. Jack remembered it only vaguely. A few scattered memories of floating, warm and comforted, as if nodding on heroin, before waking up, _wham,_ in the ocean near a beach ninety miles from where he lived, six or seven months after he disappeared. Some relief agency fished him out. Apparently he was a fairly late returnee. By now, it was generally accepted that most people that were going to come back already had.

Since then he had been searching for meaning, some sort of larger context to fit his life into. He wasn't alone in that. The ones that could remember, and even those who didn't flocked to the cults forming. Usually, but not always, they were led by someone that was "Clear," as the slang called them. The ones that could remember everything.

All of the Clears told pretty much the same story. And they all rationalized it pretty much the same way too: three Children becoming God, destroying the old world and creating the new. The Angels, they said, which were depicted in the media as a "minor extraterrestrial threat," as if aliens were commonplace before the War, were the messengers of the last God. The new God, or gods, killed all of the Angels, they said, and took over. That was why everyone disappeared. The world reset.

With that kind of consistency across hundreds of cults, it was hard not to take it seriously.

Still, every different group had their own little twist on it. In the Perry Camps (the Filipino version of the Jerry Camps), an originally tiny group of Clear refugees from the ruined island of Luzon formed _Iglesia ni mga Angheles,_ mixing the story with Christianity and their own folk beliefs. It spread rapidly throughout the camps and had probably the most mainstream support, even on the east-coast, as the white-bread sounding "Angelic Church." They were as sanitized as a cult could be, and had nothing of value for Jack. The bastards even tried to make him give up the meth!

In the Hispanic areas of SoCal, which were far rarer now than they were before Third Impact, it was fairly common to see images of the Virgin of Guadalupe painted with pale, almost bluish hair on the side of buildings. Many of the remaining Catholic churches in the Southwest had converted completely to include recent events as a fulfillment of the Book of Revelation (a woman clothed in the sun with the moon at her feet...), much to the chagrin of Rome.

And then there was _Tenshido._ The Way of the Angels, formed in much the same way as the INMA, but they seemed more… _real_ somehow. Maybe that's because they were formed by people that actually _saw_ angels. Honest to God Tokyo-3 residents. Ones who had lived in the Holy City, which now lay abandoned and silent. There was a bit more legitimacy in that, Jack thought. If anyone was going to save Jack's soul, it was going to be them.

He climbed out of his truck. The parking lot was empty. To Jack's knowledge, he was the only one in the cult with a car. It wasn't like they weren't plenty of cars lying around, but for some reason they all refused to just take one. He was also the only member of the cult that couldn't speak a lick of Japanese, and he was one of only two or three white people. He was also the only one who lived offsite, opting to sleep in abandoned houses, moving from place to place like a hermit crab.

It was near impossible to breathe in the sandstorm, so he pulled the collar of his T-shirt (Oakland Raiders and Budweiser logos. Holes, blotches of ancient pizza grease, possible bloodstains, none of which were put there by him. Found in a long-since abandoned Goodwill. Not even the scavengers wanted it) over his nose and mouth and covered his eyes with his forearm. He rushed in headlong, trying, almost in vain, to battle against the wind to get to the door. There was a door with a broken window, the protective chicken-wire mesh inside the only remnant of it. Above it was painted, in garish, pastel colours a smiling rabbit, under a smiling sun, surrounded by similarly smiling flowers. "WELCOME, FRIENDS!" it beckoned. _The House of God_.

* * *

He bowed reverently when entering and removed his shoes. This may be a thoroughly American cult but it was Japanese to its core. Jack thought it was better to respect their traditions, such as they were, than make a fuss. The halls were dark, and there was no sign of anyone. He made his way through the hallways, slowly. The path to the inner sanctum was always changing and it was dark and hard to see. No real source of illumination but the window, which stood out in the distance. There was a school desk there, broken. It cast a long shadow. Even in here there was dust, which shifted across the floor in miniature tornados. The dust inundated the ancient paint-job, making it look significantly older. They reminded Jack of ancient hieroglyphs in some tomb. They probably weren't even that old, twenty, thirty years, tops. Everything was _dirty_ now in California, and had been for some time.

The walls were completely covered in illustrations, some predating the war and some put there more recently by the cult. The Chosen Children were popular depictions. The artists differed in quality. Some were professional, even beautiful depictions of the Chosen Children, the nightmarish angels, and the mysterious "Evangelion" weapon, their _Vahanas_. Some of these icons were little more than stick figures, or scrawling, erratic, Japanese graffiti Jack couldn't understand. Some were beautiful, full sized murals. Regardless of quality they held little significance for Jack. They were just part of the scenery now.

What really interested, or rather, terrified him were the murals left over from before the war.

It was that _fucking_ rabbit again. He had seen it many times, but now he was seeing it with different eyes. It was the daycare's mascot, he presumed. It was dirty pink, and usually two to three times the size of the tallest child. _A protective spirit? A totem? Why do the children crowd around him?_ There was something vaguely malevolent about him. He wasn't lifted from pop-culture, he was an original character, probably painted by some kindly teacher to spruce up the place in happier times. But… there was something dead in his eyes. It was the eyes that scared him. They seemed to follow him, no matter where he went.

As he moved down the twisting corridor he found more depictions of it. It merged with the graffiti, illegible Japanese messages written, often in blood red paint, often partially covering the mural underneath. Here the rabbit played hopscotch with a young Mexican-Americanboy. There the rabbit skipped rope with a pack of girls. The dead eyes were there as a constant in each. In one, he pushed a little girl down a slide. His head was gone, the drywall having fallen off due to neglect.

" _WELCOME FRIENDS!"_

* * *

In the distance, he heard droning voices and a slow, steady drum beat. He was nearing the Center. The holiest place on Earth outside of Tokyo-3. The Clears called it "Terminal Dogma."

It was then that Jack got _the Fear_ again. His chest tightened and his heart threatened to explode. He sank down to the floor and waited for it to pass. _Too much crank,_ he thought, _I've sinned._ He had an urge to flee. To leave this place, he wasn't worthy. Something awful would happen if he stayed. He was sure of it.

But he pressed on.

The voices got louder as he neared Terminal Dogma. There were more twists and turns here, and it was too dark to see even the murals anymore. He used his hands to grope the walls, trying to gain his balance. _The Fear_ grew to an intensity never before experienced. Something was watching him, following him. But he couldn't leave now. That was out of the question.

Eventually, he turned down a short hallway. At the end of it there was a set of metal double doors, painted red. There were frosted glass windows set into them. Jack could see nothing through them, except the intense orange light on the other side. It almost looked as if the interior of the room was on fire, as the orange light flickered and played, casting inhuman and constantly shifting shadows. Above it the word "GYM" was written. The voices and the drumbeat were loudest here. He had reached Terminal Dogma.

The wall on one side of the hallway was painted, once again, with the Rabbit. Like a shepherd, he led a small crowd of children carrying bats and balls and other toys away from a distant city (presumably LA) and towards the awaiting doors. The other wall was painted, much later, with an Apocalyptic depiction of the Third Impact, the ghostly form of the one they called Lɪʟɪᴛʜ rising from the earth, looming over it. It was a strange juxtaposition, but oddly appropriate.

His palms were numb and sweaty. This was it. The point of no return. He steeled himself and pushed open the door.

Inside it seemed deathly silent. No one was drumming, no one was speaking. Where those sounds had come from, Jack had no idea. It was dark in the room, the only source of illumination being a small bonfire built in a pit dug at what had once been half court, which filled the room with the smell of wood-smoke. It had at one time been a standard school gym, smaller than usual, with basketball hoops low enough to accommodate children. The Rabbit loomed largest here, painted larger than life on the back wall, perhaps 15 feet tall. The firelight played and danced on his face, giving it an almost animated quality. But the eyes were dead as ever.

Below it, the words "GO JACK" were written in massive block letters, which were affixed to the wall. It frightened him, before he realized that the school team was probably called the "Jackrabbits" at some point. Most of the letters must have fallen off due to neglect.

There was a small group of worshipers, all Japanese, numbering maybe twenty five to thirty in al. They were on the floor, either rocking back and forth, or rolling slowly from side to side. Some muttered or mouthed incomprehensible words, others were silent. Jack knew why: The Sacrament. Jack had never done it himself, he was always too afraid. There was a heavy dose of hallucinogens involved, but this was not the part that had previously terrified Jack. It was the fact that these hallucinogens were mixed into a cup full of the blood-red seawater, called "LCL" by the Clears.

LCL, they said, contained the souls of the unreturned. They had all been in it once, and by drinking it they could regain a connection to the lost spirit world of Instrumentality. They called it a "synch." This was this particular sect of Tenshido's holiest rite, and everyone had to do it eventually.

Today, it was Jack's turn.

He skulked up to the altar built at The Rabbit's feet. There were three idols, dolls really, sitting on pedestals. In the centre, on some sort of dais, were the figures called simply "Red" and "White" (their names were sacred and unpronounceable, and unknown to members as low-ranking as Jack) by the Clears. They were the Divine Syzygy, the True God of this world. Below them was Lɪʟɪᴛʜ, personified as "Blue," half dead Goddess of the last world half new Goddess, who had sacrificed Herself at Third Impact to give birth to the new one. Directly in front of them was a chalice of some sort, simple brass but reminiscent of a communion chalice, filled with the mysterious dirty-red liquid.

Jack stopped, and began to tremble. _Run._ His body told him, _leave this place, and never return. "GO, JACK."_ But he couldn't. Not now. It was too late.

"You here drink?" asked the priestess, in broken English. She was an ancient woman, shrunken and wizened, and no taller than five feet at the most.

"Yes." croaked Jack. His throat was dry. _Don't drink it._ He thought, _Turn and run._

"Okay… you drink before?" she eyed him suspiciously, looking him over.

"No."

"Name?"

"Jack Laffey."

She nodded, grimly, and pointed towards the cup. When Jack turned to walk towards it, the woman was already standing behind the altar. She began to chant something in Japanese, her voice quiet at first, growing louder each time she repeated her mantra. By the end, she was shouting, her voice too young and clear for her decrepit body. Voices in the dark corners of the gym, at first unseen by Jack began to chant. Some ululated. Some cried. Some moaned in almost sexual ecstasy. The drum beat started again, at a frantic pace, coming from nowhere in particular. Jack couldn't find the damn drum.

She handed the cup to him. He bowed in thanks, accepted the cup, and drank. The priestess screeched, showering him in what was probably flour or rice.

It tasted like blood.

Nothing happened at first. It was slightly anticlimactic. But, suddenly, he realized his hand was too heavy for his body. He wanted to detach it somehow, but he could not. The drums became faster than ever. He looked back at the priestess. Her face was looming over him, and it was then that Jack realized he was laying face-up on the floor. The woman smiled, and her face melted away.

* * *

 _His rifle was out of bullets. He had taken shrapnel in the side, and he was bleeding heavily. Panicked, he wondered if his arm was still there. His legs were numb, and his head pounded. A concussive shell had gone off about 10 feet away from him, blinding him temporarily and making him unable to walk. Instead, he crawled through the mud and freezing rain to a nearby line of trees, some shelter from the iron storm coming at him the distance._

 _He leaned against a tree, trying to block out the world, just for a moment. Blood covered his face, and dripped into his mouth. Everything hurt. He had been here before, in his dreams. But this time, it seemed more real. There were bullets exploding around him, Russians just over the ridge. The Fear was more intense than it ever had been, Jack was certain that he was about to die._

 _It was then that he noticed the whimpering. It was the boy again, no older than 15, the bottom of the barrel of Russian reserves, which had been chewed up and pushed back by the meat-grinder of advanced German and American firepower, including the Bundeswehr's top-secret mechanized walker tanks, invented in the final, desperate days of the Cold War, only intended used, or even revealed, in some final, apocalyptic battle. The Russian army, still reeling from Yeltsin's cuts ten years earlier and the pitiful death of Soviet power, was no match for these squat, stocky devices, which the Americans called "Robocops" if the Germans were around and "goose-steppers" if they weren't._

 _The boy wore a tarnished, bloody olive green uniform which was obviously far too big for him. He was pinned against the massive stump of an ancient oak which had been decapitated by mortar fire. His hands were pinned above his head by spike-like shrapnel, in a mock crucifixion; whether the shell it came from was American or Russian, Jack hadn't a clue._

" _Voda." He said, "Voda…" Water… water. Jack noticed the intestines hanging from an open wound torn into his stomach, just barely peeking out from under his jacket. The boy was doomed._

 _Jack had seen this child so many times in his dreams, but now there seemed to be something… different… about him. Still, Jack did what he always did. He slowly picked himself up, his head still feeling as if it were split open, his legs still shaky. He raised his rifle, then realized, once again his magazine was empty. Instead. he put his hands around the boy's neck. H took a deep breath, trying to calm the boy a bit, and squeezed. He saw the fear in the boy's eyes, but he refused to look away from them. He would give him that at least, a man's death. Even if he wasn't yet a man._

 _Those eyes had never left him, not for twenty years._

 _But then, something changed. The fear in the boy's eyes went away, and his struggling stopped. They went placid, almost calculating. The drums were back._

" _Jack." said the boy, in perfect English. There was no strangled sound. The voice seemed to be ever-present, surrounding him completely. All around him were unseen forces grabbing at him, threatening to pull him into the earth._

 _The battle seemed to stop. No more bullets, no more driving rain. Just him and the boy._

 _Suddenly, the corpse talked._ _"You never talked to me like this before." Said Jack._

" _You never listened" said the boy._

Suddenly, they were standing at a ruined pier, shattered by the waves somewhere in El Segundo, near the Airport. Behind them was a blood red sea, the stained moon casting an eerie glow on the water. The sand was stained, and there was a heavy, iron-y scent in the air. This was the beach he was found on.

"Why are we here?" asked Jack.

The boy said nothing, at first. Then, in a voice far too low for him he asked, "Are you glad that you came back?"

"There must be a reason for it." Jack replied.

The boy smiled, sickly.

* * *

 _Blinding pain, worse than anything he had ever experienced. The walls of his mind crumbling, giving in to some external pressure. The drum beat grew louder, slowly enveloping Jack and drowning out everything._

 _He was being carried through a small village. There was a bell ringing, somewhere far off in the distance. It was slightly muffled, as if filtered through something. He saw nothing, there was only darkness. He could feel something foreign on his back, but it was impossible to turn around and see it._

 _There were muffled, whispering voices outside. He could half make them out. There was something strangely foreign about them, as if they were in a language he didn't speak, but still somehow comprehended the meaning of, internally, like reading a book in a dream. He couldn't make out the words, but he knew exactly what was being said._

"… _bullshit that there's no military honour guard. The poor boy gives his life for his country and this is what he gets? Suka Blyat! It's a crime."_

" _Don't swear at a funeral." said another voice in an angry whisper. The voice was that of a very old man. Under his anger was palpable sense of weariness. "the Unclean Force will hear! Do you want a domovoi on your hands?"_

" _You and your superstitions!" said the younger voice, dismissively. But there was an instant of silence, either respectful or scared, before he began his whispered rant again. " The Americans are behind this, with their one-sided 'Valentine' treaty. The bought UN stooges say we get to bury our dead, but no 'displays of militarism,' allowed! And the Kremlin goes with it! After those criminals drafted him!"_

 _Grimly, the other man spoke. "My father died in the Great Patriotic War. He got no Honour Guard either."_

 _After some incomprehensible yet clearly abbreviated ceremony, he was seen off by the small crowd of babushkas and old men. Somehow he knew that this was not the only funeral in the village today. Somehow he knew that the subject of this funeral was one of the now-extinct class of young ones in the village, sacrificed to the altar of a pointless war fought for unclear purposes. A terrified and knee-jerk reaction to a greater tragedy that required unity, not discord. A war at the worst possible time, a suicide attempt on a global scale._

" _I knew him once, as I knew all of you." Said a voice Jack presumed was a priest. "Quiet boy. Pious. Thoughtful." He paused for effect. The eulogy, exactly twenty seconds long, was complete. "In a blessed falling asleep, grant, O Lord, eternal rest unto Thy departed servant," a pause, presumably to read from a crib note, "Vladimir Serafinyich Yakor, and make his memory eternal!"_

 _And the small crowd answered, half heartedly, "_ _Vechnaya Pamyat'! Vechnaya Pamyat'! Vechnaya Pamyat'!_

 _There was some shifting as he was lowered into the ground haphazardly, as if they were rushing. He felt the grave dirt on top of him, the voices, which were already shuffling off to go to the next gravesite, were snuffed out. Struggling, Jack managed to turn around in the coffin. He finally saw what was behind him. It was boy he killed, well into decomposition. His face was gone entirely, replaced by a skull, wearing, disturbingly enough, a paper crown. In his half-skeletal hands he clutched a small icon of a divine figure plunging a cross-tipped spear into a menacing serpentine demon, St. Michael the Archangel._

 _Jack screamed in terror, for the first time in years. But no sound came out. Once again, he felt his mind being pried open, more violently this time, his memories probed by external, unfriendly forces. More of his carefully constructed walls broke down. His thoughts, once filled with little more than the duelling yet equally base urges of self-destruction and self-preservation, were replaced and rewritten. Memories that did not exist previously were introduced. Though tomes of new information were introduced, one thought, one dark revelation, dominated more than any other._

" _ **Tʜᴇ ᴡʀᴏɴɢ Gᴏᴅ ᴡᴏɴ**_ _."_

* * *

" _I hate him." Thought Jack, referring to the wrong God. The boy whom he now had a clear picture of in his mind. He had no reason to, but he did._

He was sitting on the pier again.

"You were tricked." said the boy. "And you know it."

 _He was deep below the ocean, reconstituted, moulded back together and stitched up. He swam towards the light. He was breathing what seemed like liquid blood, stark naked, ripped from The Source, reborn into the world._

 _Free from the grave._

" _ **Fʀᴇᴇ? Nᴏ**_ _" said a voice, the Boy's voice. "_ _ **Yᴏᴜ ᴡᴇɴᴛ ʙᴀᴄᴋ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ Bʟᴀᴄᴋ Iʀᴏɴ Pʀɪsᴏɴ, ᴍʏ ғʀɪᴇɴᴅ. Aɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ʟᴏᴄᴋᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴏᴏʀ ʏᴏᴜʀsᴇʟғ."**_

 _Already the memories were slipping. He swam, pathetically, against the waves. Eventually a net ensnared him and dragged him up, he was on the deck. He vomited profusely, bloody discharge covering the deck of the commandeered fishing boat flying coast-guard colours. He tried to remember where he was. He was drunk, under some overpass in Chino, or maybe Ontario, and then he was… gone._

" _Don't worry, that's normal." said the soldier, referring to the vomit. "Welcome back. Let's get your name, date of birth, and place of primary residence, please."_

 _He answered and was towelled off. He was groggy. He had to remember… something. What was it? Had he been to heaven? Was this heaven? Or was it Hell. The water certainly looked angry enough._

 _On the bow of the ship stood the Boy. The God that Lost. The God he had to serve._

 _He remembered now. He remembered everything._

"You were tricked, and you know it." Jack looked down and saw himself sitting on the edge of the pier, grasping some sort of government form, which he quickly discarded. He stared headlong off into

"Yes." said Jack

"Are you angry?"

"Yes." He said, again monotone. His mind was not his own, any longer, and he liked it that way. There was no love from this God, but there was order. There was a purpose.

"Do you regret your decision to return?"

"Yes." Jack's eyes were dead. _Like the rabbit._

"Do you want to go back?"

He looked back at the Boy, and remembered. The boy smiled again. His eyes were dead like the Rabbit's too.

" _Is this heaven?" he asked the Woman._

" _This is the Instrumentality of Man."_

" _Oh…" he looked at his hands and realized he had none, at least, not really. "I don't like it. I don't feel like…" he struggled for the word. "Me."_

" _No. You are not you. Not entirely. Your AT Field is breaking down, and soon any vestige of individuality will slip away."_

" _Oh." There was really no response to that. And what, exactly, was an AT field? "Uh… is this heaven?"_

" _I can offer you a choice." She said, ignoring his question. "Live in the world, filled with all the pain that living entails, or remain in Instrumentality."_

" _Which is better?"_

" _That's a relative term."_

 _He thought for a second, "I don't know, man… the world… it hurts so much. The dreams… I think I'll take heaven."_

 _She frowned. "This existence is not heaven. This is oblivion." She looked at him, with a ghost of a smile. "If you decide to live, anywhere can be heaven, because you're alive." She took his hands in his, comforting him. Like a mother. "Make your choice. Do you wish to live, or do you wish to die?"_

 _Death. Death was pain. He had been surrounded by death for a year. Lived in it, breathed it. Death was the bloodsoaked mud that soaked through his boots. Death was the shrieks of soldiers, as they lay with their legs blown off by landmines. Death was no release, it lingered for days, permeated everything. He remembered that Russian boy in the war, which he slaughtered. How long it too for him to finally die when he crushed his windpipe. How he tried to plead with him. How his guts hanged out of his stomach. That was death. This was no real choice. There was only one option. "I want to live."_

 _And so, he did._

* * *

"Humans, individually, are weak." said the boy, who once again stood beside him on the pier.

" Together, they are strong. That is what you rejected. I was human once. Many humans, a whole council of them. Once, we fought amongst ourselves, we quarreled. But now we are united into the Soul we always intended to become. We are one mind now, and we are strong. You have now been united with us. You will be the Vessel of Salvation. You will allow us to complete what we started."

"Why me?"

"I was invited." Said the corpse.

* * *

 _He was lying on the streets, again, cold and shivering. No open houses here, he thought he could score in this neighbourhood. He was wrong, and he was out of crank. His skin was itchy, and his head hurt. The blisters on his feet had popped again, they burned horribly. His gums were bleeding again, and pretty soon his teeth would fall out. He hadn't gone to the Tenshido building in a few weeks, it had been a long bender. Maybe he should go back? He lit his last cigarette. In a few days. Maybe he could score tomorrow._

 _There was a fight somewhere nearby. Gunshots. He hoped a stray would fly this way and hit him right between the eyes. End it all. Maybe he should do it himself. Was suicide a sin in Tenshido? Were there sins in Tenshido? The Priests talked a lot but he couldn't speak Japanese. Maybe I should drink the LCL, join for real. They said you saw shit after you drank it. Revelations, real life changing shit._

" _Fuck it." He said, out loud. This was his last chance, no revelation, and he was ending it all. He had a gun. It would be quick. But he had to be sure there wasn't something left for him to do. Some purpose._

 _He was overcome with anger at the Usurper, that had ascended to the Highest Throne only to climb back down again. Who had doomed them all to a life of pain and separation. He stole godhood, and then rejected it. It was a sin of the highest order: "How art thou fallen from Heaven, oh Morning Star."_

 _The final walls broke down, he was overwhelmed. Any resistance offered was feeble, and, probably token. Jack, really, did not wish to resist. Not anymore. Not now, that he knew that the false God, the Demiurge, had tricked him into rejecting his place in paradise. He was angry, for his own reasons. This anger paled in comparison to the righteous rage he felt from that exterior force now living inside of him. He submit to the rage, and let it carry him._

 _It was then that Jack, as an entity, died. He was one with them now. A vessel for God._

He awoke with a start on the cold floor of the gym. The fire had gone out, the drums had stopped. He could hear that outside the wind had died down, and the fire was out. The altar was put away. He wasn't in Terminal Dogma anymore; it was just a school gym now, stripped of all significance.

His body, not his own anymore, felt thirty years younger.

He walked over to the priestess, who looked far more like a human in the light. In perfect Japanese, the entity once known as Jack, and now known only as SEELE said, simply, "Thank you for watching over me."

The fact that he was speaking Japanese seemed to shock her, but she merely nodded. With that, he bowed, and walked out of the Temple, towards his truck.

The second scenario had begun.

He knew now what he had to do.

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

The possession scene was hard as hell. Witchy shit is hard to write, and so I had to do it three separate times. It was derivative Faustian drivel at first, then a bunch of random incomprehensible symbolism, then something at least releasable.

I feel as if I took a massive risk with this chapter, especially with all of the good reviews I've gotten. For those of you hoping for a completely down-to-earth story in the vein of Bagheera, I'm sorry to disappoint you. However, I encourage you to stick around, because there will be things in this story for you too. I promise the next chapter will be far more grounded in reality than this one. It also won't be an OC chapter.

Either way, I'm glad this chapter is over. It was hard as hell, and I'm still not entirely proud of it. If you see any grammar/spelling mistakes or weirdly-phrased nonsense or continuity errors please contact me immediately. I want to know, I want to fix it.

Till next time,

Folk Devil.


	3. Chapter 3 - Pneuma

CHAPTER 3: PNEUMA

" _They ought to make it a binding clause that if you find God you get to keep Him."_

-Phillip K Dick, VALIS

" _Some hold that the soul is divisible, and that one part thinks, another desires. If, then, its nature admits of its being divided, what can it be that holds the parts together?"_

-Aristotle, De Anima

 **ASUKA**

The Massachusetts Turnpike was backed up again, and Asuka was _not_ pleased. It had been bumper to bumper all the way from the South Boston Bypass, and traffic showed no signs of letting up. Unit-2 Junior, her red Mercedes bought with the ill-gotten war money NERV sent her, could _maybe_ get to ten miles an hour on the faster stretches of road. To someone with as many speeding tickets as Asuka, this was torture. She hated few things more than feeling bogged down and stalled, and yet here she was. There was nothing she could do about it.

 _I'm going to be late_ , she thought. _Again._ She wasn't even over the Bass River yet, and was still stuck somewhere in Fort Point. MIT would be at least another hour and a half away at this rate, which was absolutely unacceptable. This morning she had a meeting scheduled with the university to write her a letter of recommendation which could _maybe_ get her temporary access to the MAGI, still buried deep beneath Worchester in the former NERV base there. Since Third Impact, it had been the property of the US Government.

Her thesis was not going well. Since she started it six months ago she had gotten very little useable data. The data that she _did_ have was of little use without the MAGI to interpret it. The stress of it was starting to get to her. By now she knew she had picked too ambitious a project. Most of her colleagues assumed she chose it to stroke her own ego. She was, after all, attempting to re-write the standard definition of the "soul" in Natural Metaphysics. They were, of course, entirely wrong about her motivations. This was personal.

She was trying to solve her mother's death.

* * *

"Up late?" asked Shinji. He was back from one of his midnight walks, a product of the insomnia that had plagued him since the Impacts. His pant-legs were covered in road-salt, picked up from the melting snow outside. It was the ass-end of winter, the snow had long since lost the magical quality it had in December. The snow-banks, as tall as Shinji, had turned black, the gravel cryogenically frozen for months finally starting to peek through, giving everything a distinctive, dirty quality.

"Working." She said, her gaze not leaving the laptop. She was seated on the floor, her legs crossed, typing furiously. "Trying to get this damn proposal done. No time to sleep."

Shinji sat down on the couch behind her. "How's it going?"

"Like shit." She said.

"Wanna talk about it?"

"Not particularly. You should go to bed. Maybe get up before noon, for once." She said, still typing.

"Not without you."

"Oh frig off, you don't need me that much." She said, knowing that wasn't true. Shinji could _not_ sleep alone. Not anymore.

It would be pathetic, if it wasn't true for her, too. Since the Third Impact, they had not been apart for more than a day. They simply could not function without each other.

"You shouldn't go out like that at night anymore. This is a bad neighborhood."

He sat down next to her, and began to massage her shoulders. She shrugged him off, and continued typing. "I can't just… lay there." He said.

"Suit yourself." She said. She looked up from the screen for a moment. "Hey, how does this sound? You're a better writer than me: 'Under the current anima-pneumatic framework established by Fuyutsuki, Alvand, and Belgrano, the "soul" exists in constant state of singular hypostasis, totally confined within one individual. The "soul" has been conceptualized as a single, indivisible entity entirely linked to the physical form. This paper seeks to dispute this conceptualization, and propose that the "soul" may, through certain anomalous yet reproducible circumstances, exist within separate physical forms though a process of anima-pneumatic lysis."

"Uh… it's… good? I didn't understand a lot of it. My English…"

"Whatever. The flow was okay? Not too wordy?"

"Yeah. I can't think of any way to phrase it better, at least. Is that all you have written?" he asked leaning over her shoulder to see the screen.

"I've been working on this for twelve hours, _Baka_ , I've got way more than this. But I get really technical after the opening paragraph. Lots of AT Field and anima barrier equations. It _is_ Metaphysical Field Theory after all, which is by _far_ the most math heavy subject in Natural Metaphysics. In other words, it's stuff you couldn't possibly understand."

"Math was never really my subject."

"You artsy kids are all the same." She said, smiling. "Alright. It's all… starting to come together. I can do this." She said. "I can _do_ this."

"What does lysis mean?" He mangled the pronunciation of the word. She let it slide.

"It means splitting. Like, breaking down into smaller pieces."

"So you think the soul can split?"

"Basically, that's the gist of it." She said.

"Why? I thought the soul was kind of… _you._ "

She got quiet for a minute, quickly plotting how best to phrase the information. How much to reveal. "Well… When Mama… k-killed herself… she uh… I… I could tell that there was something _wrong_ with her. But I could also tell that she was still _there_. Sort of. Like, there was something inside of her still. A shadow of herself. She…" she choked back the sob, which came out of nowhere, that were beginning to form at the back of her throat. _Keep it together, Asuka. You're not that girl anymore._ Shinji moved in to comfort her. Again, she shrugged him off. "It's okay… W-when I saw Mama in Unit-02, I knew that there was still some… _part_ of her alive. Maybe a piece of her stayed in her body and part of her went into Eva during that experiment. I… need to find out if that's true."

"Why?"

"Because maybe that means there's still a piece of her alive somewhere. I can't be sure if the core of Unit—02 was broken during…" All at once, the memories flooded back. The Mass Production Evangelions _eating_ her, violating her body in the worst and most painful way possible. She quickly suppressed them, shoving them back inside of herself. It wasn't a healthy coping strategy, but it was a familiar one. " _…_ that… _thing_. Maybe her soul's still alive somewhere, frozen in some government lab. Maybe she even made it into—" She used the forbidden word, "-Instrumentality. I don't know."

"That seems pretty unlikely." He said, before quickly adding, "B…but not impossible!"

Asuka sighed. "You're right, but at least it'll give me some kind of closure. If I can prove my hypothesis wrong, then maybe I can grieve for her. If I prove it right…" she let the thought hang there. "Anyway, it's still early days, I don't know the mechanisms yet, just a few hunches. I'd need a hell of a lot of time and a hell of a lot of money to actually do this properly. That's why this proposal has to be perfect. I need a bit more funding than the average PhD candidate."

"And… uh, your PhD itself. You want to get that too, right?"

"Oh, yeah, that. Completely slipped my mind." She went back to typing. " _Fucking_ equation formatting!" She exclaimed, slamming her fist down on the coffee-table.

"I'm sure they'll approve it. You're the smartest person I know."

She knocked on the table.

"Why'd you do that?"

"Knock on wood. It's just a stupid superstition. You do it when somebody tempts The Fates. I think it comes from asking the wood nymphs for help, from way back when we Europeans were talking to trees and living in caves, or something." She said. "That's what Wikipedia said, at least."

"Oh. I think I heard that in an anime or something once. Or maybe a movie."

"You watch _anime_? That's all trash. And it's a pretty common superstition. I'm surprised you haven't heard of it before."

"I was just a kid." He said, defending himself. He peered at her paper again. "Why do you have 'soul' in quotation marks?"

She stopped typing, and turned to him. "Well it's not like there's really a _soul_. It's just the term they use. All the early guys in Natural Metaphysics were weirdos. They named everything in the science after religious shit. Why do you think we were fighting "angels?" It's not healthy if you ask me, but I don't make the rules, and I wasn't around when they set the nomenclature. The 'soul' and the _soul_ are different. The 'soul' is measurable, the _soul_ isn't. The _soul_ 's just a fairy tale." She said, turning off the computer. "Screw it, I've written enough. I've been working on this shit for like twelve hours straight. It'll still be here tomorrow. Let's go to bed, Baka. I know the sun isn't up yet, so it might be a bit early for you."

Then, coyly, she said, "Maybe I could tire you out a bit. I know a few things that might do the trick…" she began slowly rubbing the inside of his thigh, gradually moving up towards his –

"Hey Asuka, do you believe in God?"

She snapped her hand back, and glared at him. "Way to kill the mood, Baka."

"Sorry."

She sighed. "I've lived with you long enough to be used to it by now. And to answer your question, no, I don't. At least, not really."

"Why not? I'm not arguing with you or anything, you're probably right, but…'

"I don't know, when I was a kid I thought the whole idea of God was kind of ridiculous. I've pretty much been an atheist as long as I remember. Neither of my parents were religious, so I didn't grow up with it. My father was especially anti-God, from what I can remember. Maybe because he was raised in the Bible Belt." She said. "But ever since... you know … I've had my doubts about doubting."

"What do you mean?"

"Well like, did God create the universe? Is he some old man in the sky? Does he watch everything we do? Can we eat him in cracker form? I don't think so. But… I do think that something _unnatural_ happened… _there_. I sure as hell can't explain it. At least, not yet." She smiled weakly. "Hell, maybe _you're_ God."

Shinji frowned, and said, "I hope not."

She laughed, a bit hollowly. "I'm sick of this topic, Third Child. It's stupid. We gotta stop living next to a Church. Gate of Heaven my ass, they sound like that cult in San Diego that offed themselves a couple years before Second Impact. Turns out these guys are just run-of-the-mill Catholics, I looked into it. Can't even be an _interesting_ cult. And their bells are annoying too." She jumped on his lap. "Are we having sex or what?"

And so, they did.

* * *

After nearly half an hour, traffic had barely moved. Asuka had forgotten the USB cord for her MP3 player, again, so she was forced to resort to the radio to break the silence, which was adding to the frustration. The radio was already tuned to some talk station, a call in show.

A man with a thick, working class Boston accent, with broad vowels and gravelly undertones was speaking. Asuka was initially unaware of the subject of conversation. Clearly, the man was a lifer, someone who had been born and bred here: "I work hard, Artie, I really do. I have three kids, well, two now, one's still in the ocean… But I ain't got no money since the banks went under and wiped out my mortgage fund, my pension, everything. I get nothin' from the government, no support, and there's no jobs for us cause of all the immigrants. Y'know, we've been tryin' to get on with our lives best we can but like, these… these… _waves_ of _Jap-"_

"We're, uh, live by the way…" said the host, clearly fearing a sponsor-unfriendly tirade of slurs.

He didn't miss a beat, "-anese, uh… refugees," _Nice save._ "are making it pretty damn difficult these days. You know the other day I called the uh, what's that thing called where you check when the Red Sox is playin' on Channel four?" He pronounced "four" more like "fow-ah". "Anyway, I called that, and the robot voice thing wanted to talk to me in Japanese. Do they even _like_ baseball? I mean, I remember when this country, when this _city_ belonged to Americans. We let all these people in, millions of 'em, outta the kindness of our hearts and they won't even learn English or adapt or _nothin'_. I ain't a bad guy, I know it's tough over there in, uh, Japan or whatever. But still, the way they're treating us in _our_ country is... ya know… it's just testin' my patience is all. _After,_ by the way, they caused the whole mess to begin with."

"In what way?" asked the host, Artie something or rather, who was clearly perturbed. His finger was almost certainly already hovering over the "hang up" button. The guest was a ticking time bomb, and the potential FCC fines of keeping him on too long were astronomical. Also, even though this wasn't quite NPR, Asuka was fairly sure there was an ideological basis to their disagreement. To his credit, the host was at least feigning neutrality.

"Well _we_ didn't blow up the world, did we?"

She shut the thing off. That was enough radio for this drive _._

Asuka sighed. Americans, by and large, weren't particularly accommodating to the "hordes" of Japanese settlers which were "invading" the United States. Asuka knew first hand, she had seen the Jerry Camps: though not quite internment camps, they certainly gave the sense that America's new Japanese residents weren't particularly welcome. Even when you were out, it was still common to get stares or worse if you looked a certain way, especially here on the East Coast, which was swamped with refuge because it was less destroyed than anywhere else on Earth.

In certain parts of Southie, the rougher parts, most newly arrived Japanese were immediately warned by some neighbour that had been out of the camps longer to stay indoors on St. Patrick's Day, Pearl Harbour Day, Second Impact Remembrance Day, and Third Impact Remembrance Day. Especially the first one, as alcohol and misplaced Irish pride mixed badly, and led more often than not to violence.

In general, a large subset of Americans, even the non-violent ones, held the Japanese people as a whole responsible for the Impacts. In a way, she couldn't blame them. They were scared, they were hurt, and they wanted to lash out at something. It didn't help that the Japanese were America's mortal enemies only a half-decade before the Impacts. The Ottawa trials, with their constant 24 hour media coverage, certainly didn't help. Already, _Ikari_ had become catch-all term for Japanese refugees, about on the same level as "Tojo:" _"I sawr dis Ikari broad with some nice fuckin' tits in O'Shaughnessy's foah two dollah tequila night da othah day,"_ et cetera.

If only they knew there actually _was_ an Ikari in the city. _A former Ikari_ , she reminded herself. She still hadn't gotten used to the fact that they were _together_ , officially at least. He was especially affected by this, mostly because he thought he actually _was_ responsible. It didn't help that the majority of the American population were all too happy to oblige him in his guilt spiral.

Asuka blended in far better than Shinji did, her Japanese heritage barely noticeable, with her striking red hair. At first, she was determined to resist the "ignorant redneck assholes," by not shying away from her Japanese side. But over time, she gradually stopped speaking Japanese as much in public, and often introduced herself as Asuka _Langley_ , neglecting the Sohryu part of her double-barrel name like it was some kind of black mark. She even said the word _Asuka_ as quickly as possible now, hoping they would think it was Polish or something.

When she thought of this clear lack of self-respect it made her feel ashamed and depressed. It was sickening to her sense of pride, which was already battered. So, she simply tried not to think about it.

Still, a part of her wondered if the headstrong thirteen year old girl she once was would stand for that kind of treatment. Somehow, she doubted it.

She was now finally entering the Fort Point Tunnel, but still, the traffic up ahead was unyielding. The cars trickled through the tunnel's mouth like a herd of doomed cows headed for the slaughter house.

Clearly, there was some kind of accident up ahead, probably right at the mouth of the tunnel. At least, that's what Asuka figured. There had to be _some_ reason for this.

Boston's roads weren't built for this many people. Since Third Impact, all cities on the Eastern seaboard had ballooned in population. Boston was at nearly quadruple the population it had during Second Impact, one of the few cities in the world to actually _gain_ people. There was no money to expand the infrastructure, though, so they had to make do. Still, usually the traffic on this particular freeway wasn't quite _this_ bad.

Asuka could tell already this was going to be a long day. Her frustration had been mounting, gradually, since she woke up. She was already on edge from Shinji's episode that morning. He was having a hard time recently, in the last few months. Much harder than her, at least on the surface. His terrors sometimes kept her up most of the night now. Asuka would lie there, listening to him whimper pathetically, powerless to comfort him.

It was her turn to be the pillar of strength in the relationship, God knows he was there for her before, but Asuka didn't feel up to the task. Her own darkness was quiet now, lying dormant. But it ever present. The Fifteenth and the Mass Production Evas could strike at her from beyond the grave at any time.

She was bottling up her problems again. Behaving in a way distressingly similar to the way she did when she was a pilot.

It didn't help that Shinji hadn't touched her in at least a week. For all her teenage allegations of Shinji's perversion (which was, admittedly, justified on one occasion,) she was the one that initiated almost all sexual contact in the relationship. Lately, Shinji had been refusing altogether.

It made her feel inadequate, like she wasn't good enough, or something. _Maybe it's the scars._ She thought grimly. The scars, which were now shiny, silvery lines running over half of her body, made Asuka feel, well, ugly. They were far less noticeable than they used to be. For about a year after coming back, they had been angry red, jagged marks that had every indication of being permanent. Shinji insisted that he didn't care, but Asuka had never really believed him. She was damaged goods, internally and externally, and she knew that.

The tan minivan in front of her slammed on its brakes again, for the fifth time in as many minutes. The "dumb bitch" in the car, whose flabby profile Asuka could barely make out was making this drive even more intolerable than it was already. She had cut her off some time ago, and was going far slower than she needed to, causing Asuka to tailgate her out of spite, occasionally honking her horn just to frighten her. She clearly couldn't handle even the most basic of tasks. _How the hell did she even dress herself in the morning?_ She asked herself. _Like shit, probably._ Even worse was the fact that there were those little stick-figure stickers Americans stuck on their back windows sometimes to represent their offspring. The fact that someone like this could produce children made her sick.

She could, and Asuka couldn't. Probably, at least. She hadn't tried to conceive yet, obviously, as she was still far too young. But her menstruation was sporadic, almost non-existent, planting in her a germ of concern that maybe the sympathetic injuries final battle against the Mass Production Evas had damaged her reproductive organs beyond repair. Any doctor she casually consulted about it, (after a great deal of pestering, of course, as most told her not to worry too much about that stuff yet, "you're still a kid, for God's sakes!") eventually told her, ominously, "don't get your hopes up too much."

One, a sickeningly sweet sixty year old woman with cold, wrinkly hands, and a propensity to call her "hun," had even slipped her an adoption pamphlet. She said "there are a lot of kids without homes out there, if you're interested." Then, patronizingly, "Maybe wait until you're a bit older though, hun." Asuka smiled and nodded, thanking her. As soon as she got out of sight, Asuka tore the damn thing up. She still hadn't told Shinji. He didn't need to hear something like that. She even took birth control pills, more out of ritual than real concern. Still, if she had an accidental pregnancy, even now, some small part of her would celebrate. At least that part of her wouldn't be broken.

Asuka had never wanted children. She had never even _liked_ children. She was in no rush to produce children. But the fact that she probably could never _choose_ to have them later was just another injustice in a long line of slights the world had handed her.

And this bitch had _four_.

The van was swerving slightly within the lane. Not really in a drunk way, just in an incompetent way, like she didn't know quite where the lines were. Asuka had, for all intents and purposes, only one functional eye, and she could track the damn things better than the half-stunned driver in front of her. She glanced at the clock. _Jesus_ , it was already ten. The meeting was supposed to have started fifteen minutes ago. Asuka wasn't even out of cock-sucking motherfucking tunnel yet.

Everything around her car was dark, except for the red lights of the minivan's brake-lights, which became the only light in the world. Asuka felt her chest tighten and her breathing grow shallow. Her head was getting light. She knew what this was. Desperately, she tried to calm herself.

Then, there was a ray of hope. There was an opening up ahead, she could see it. A literal light at the end of a literal tunnel. She tried to swerve into the next lane but the van blocked her in. _Bitch!_ She thought, gunning it. The van slammed on its brakes, causing Asuka to do likewise. The bitch in the minivan was obviously playing with her now, as she slowed down to a crawl.

She had nothing better to do but make Asuka's life even more miserable.

Asuka felt tears well up in her eyes. She choked them down. _Don't give her the satisfaction._ Her breathing got even more shallow. She saw stars, and noticed her hands were shaking violently. It wasn't fair.

It just wasn't fair.

Nothing was.

 _She slammed her foot onto the peddle, ramming two tons of reliable German engineering leased at low, low pricing, factory direct, with 0% financing for eighteen months, directly into the back of the tan Dodge Caravan, causing it to cave in nicely. Glass scattered from both of their vehicles all over the tunnel. The Dodge careened into a wall, completely totalling it. Asuka felt her face hit the airbag. Her forehead was bleeding, turning her vision red. She grinned sickeningly, forcing the door open. She retrieved a tire iron from the back seat, not really necessary because the tires she ordered special from Germany "never went flat, baka, like your Toyo garbage."_

 _She strode over, feeling like a Valkyrie in a Wagnerian epic, but with the eyes of a Berserker, ready to get her revenge._

 _The woman sitting in the front seat turned out to be an MP Eva. Small world. Asuka smashed open the side window, which was somehow unbroken, and pulled the MP Eva out through it. Her children, little MP Evas, were screaming in the back. Asuka raised her tire iron high, like Mama with her glaive, and brought it down as hard as she could, which was pretty damn hard. There was a sickeningly satisfying wet "thud" sound, like a piñata full of wet meat being struck by a golf-club, as she felt the woman's (wait, wasn't it an MP-Eva?) forehead give way like a cantaloupe, the brain matter inside spattering all over the highway. She hit her a few more times, to ensure her foe was utterly destroyed. That she couldn't come back and hurt her again. That she couldn't hurt Mama. The stress seemed to melt away with every swing._

 _The kids were still screaming. Asuka was screaming too._

Suddenly, Asuka snapped out of the violent fantasy. Asuka had exited the tunnel some time ago. How she had managed not to careen into a wall and die she didn't know. Probably some sort of lizard-brain muscle memory, left over from her piloting days. The van was long gone. It probably had probably gotten bored of torturing Asuka, or maybe a little scared of her no-doubt erratic driving, and took an exit. _I had a panic attack._ She thought, only now regaining her breath.. Asuka glanced at the clock on her dashboard. It had been twenty minutes since the episode began.

She saw that traffic was thinning out ahead. It was an accident that caused the traffic jam, after all. For a long stretch of road, traffic was down to a single lane, backing everything up for miles.

There were cops milling about the scene, trying to block rubberneckers from getting a good look. On the backs of their jackets was one word, **HOMICIDE**.

Despite their efforts to shield the public from the accident, Asuka managed to see the crash site. Most of the gore had already been mopped up by clean-up crews some time ago. But she saw the cars.

There was a cherry red Mercedes, rammed into the back of a tan Dodge Caravan.

* * *

Asuka was in class now. The meeting with the university brass had to be rescheduled until later that week, and there was absolutely no time to do any significant work on her thesis today. She felt as if the day was wasted already. _What a ripoff._

It was the first class of the semester, so the lecture was light on content, mostly housekeeping stuff. A list of books to buy, an outline of the syllabus, a grade rundown. She wanted to keep the class short. Asuka didn't want to be here today. There was little energy in her presentation, and at times she felt like curling up and breaking down. In total, her work day would amount to about two hours, total. About the same time as her commute this morning took. In other words, the day was wasted.

"So just to recap, that's _Absolute Borderline_ by Hussein Alvand, _Metaphysical Biology: Theory and Practice_ by Kozo Fuyutsuki," _may he burn in Hell_ , "and, uh… _AT Fields and Consciousness_ by… Kyoko Zeppelin-Sohryu."

She surveyed the room. The lecture hall held about 250 people, and nearly every seat was filled. By the end of the first month, less than a quarter would still be there. When she walked in, most assumed she was another student. When she had begun to talk, there were puzzled stares, a few jokes coming from the back of the room. She wondered, fleetingly, if she should make an example of them. Better not. Why have them hate her on the first day? They were right, she _was_ young. Hell, she couldn't even get a beer at the university bar yet.

Her face became as set and serious as it could. She felt like a fraud, a shitty child actor giving a speech in an elementary school play. "Now, before I let you go, I just want to emphasize one thing to you. A lot of professors, especially in science, don't believe in teaching morality lessons. That's bullshit. If the last few years have taught me anything, it's that we need more morality lessons, especially in this field. The course of study you're about to embark upon is probably the most dangerous that there is. It has the most potential, out of all of the natural sciences at least, to be abused, with the worst consequences imaginable. One of the books you were assigned was written by an alleged war-criminal. The other was written by my mother, who was herself victimized by… these people. The two… tragedies, I guess, is the best way to describe it, of the past two decades, the tragedies that have defined your lives and mine, were caused by people seeking to use the things that _I am going to teach you for_ their own ends. To satisfy their own egos, or to settle personal scores.

She paused for effect. "I have a responsibility to warn you, now, before I teach you anything substantive, about just how _dangerous_ that is. About how much pain it can cause…" _Too personal?_ She thought. The speech, her Cassandra-like warning to the next generation of Metaphysical Biologists, sounded much better in her head. She was being too quiet. She was _never_ quiet.

"Metaphysical biology, more than any other field, requires absolute devotion to the idea that life is not something to be trifled with by humanity. It must not be used for profit. It must not be used for yourself. It definitely shouldn't be used to "improve" humanity. If you came to this class wanting that, leave now. Find something else. I won't judge you. In fact, I'll congratulate you, because you might have spared the world a lot of pain."

"If you can do that, then, well… welcome to Metaphysical Biology 101, and good luck."

The class was dead silent. The air was oppressive. Did the speech work? Did they care? Did she just make a fool out of herself? Was another panic attack coming on? _Not now…,_ she thought, _better end this quick._

"Anyway, next week we'll start with Guf, Destrudo and Libido. And leave that Freudian shit at the door, I didn't mean it in that way. Also, read chapters one, two, and three up to page 98 in _Theory and Practice._ Do _not_ read ahead, you'll just hurt yourself. _"_ People were filing out already. She noticed that there were few conversations going on in the aisles. Maybe that meant she reached them. Maybe that meant they thought she was insane.

Before long, the class was empty, except for one lonely figure at the back of the room. She was female, Asian, and dressed very conservatively. Asuka guessed she was somewhere in her early thirties, maybe a bit younger. Only when the last student had left the room did the woman slowly walk down the stairs to the podium where Asuka packed her things up.

"Yes?" asked Asuka, clearly in no mood to answer questions. "Did I leave something out?"

"Asuka Langley-Sohryu, right?" The tone in the woman's voice was odd, far too business-like for a student. Asuka felt goose-bumps rise up on the back of her neck. Nothing good could come of this.

"Who's asking?" she asked, tentatively. Why the hell would a student not know her name?

"You're… aware of the Ottawa Trials, correct?" _Oh no. Not this. Not now_.

"Yes?" _Please just be a gawker. Or a journalist, or a weirdo asking for an autograph._

"And you were formerly employed by NERV, correct?" _Damn it._

"What, exactly, is the point of this conversation?" she snapped. Asuka could feel a migraine coming on. It was beginning to exert a vice-like grip to the back of her eyes. "I can tell by your… your… _pants-suit_ that you're not a student here . Are you a Fed or just a weirdo? Spit it out."

The woman smiled, smugly. "My name is Special Agent Ashley Akizuki. I'm with the FBI." She produced a laminated badge. It seemed legitimate. Asuka quickly noticed that the name written on it was _Asuka_ Akizuki. What the hell kind of omen was that? "The International Criminal Court has issued a subpoena for you and your husband, regarding the events of five years ago. The Special Prosecutor wants to meet with you and your husband, personally, to discuss your time as pilots. The meeting'll be here in Boston, but you may be asked to testify in court, in which case you'll have to travel to Ottawa." She produced documents from her breast pocket and handed it to Asuka. "Naturally we'll pay for any associated costs Mr. Ikari and yourself incur, such as travel or –."

"His name is Mr. _Sohryu_ now, and no, we will not be meeting with this 'Special Prosecutor'." She said, in Japanese. She didn't want any bystanders understanding this conversation.

"I… uh… don't speak Japanese." The woman said, clearly embarrassed. Asuka savoured a bit of satisfaction from that. It was a small victory. But English meant that anyone that wandered by might overhear.

" _Deutsch_?" The Fed shook her head.

Asuka switched back to English. "We've already told you that we're not participating in that farce of a trial. Find someone else, and stop harassing us." Soon people would begin to file in for the next class, some kind of Art History thing. They had to leave soon, or everyone would see her… the rumors would start flying.

"I don't think you quite understand, we're not asking you. We're _telling_ you. The subpoena's already been issued. We would've come to your home but you've been fairly… elusive. Since you changed your address we haven't been able to find you so easily."

"For a damn good reason, clearly. We've been through this already. You guys said, to our _face,_ that there wasn't enough direct contact between us and Fuyutsuki for you to get a subpoena. Our participation was strictly voluntary, you said. That bitch from the ICC, with the overbite. What the hell has changed?"

"What changed," she said, "is that we don't want you for the Fuyutsuki trial." she paused for a second, for effect. _I'm not the only bad actress here._ "This is about Ikari. Gendo Ikari."

Asuka couldn't quite believe what she was hearing. "He… he's dead." _Unless…_

"Not anymore, apparently. Death doesn't mean what it used to. He's being held at an undisclosed location." She flashed her that smug smile again. "Congratulations. You're one of the first to know."

The remnants of Asuka's world, which she had worked so hard to keep stable since they fell apart the last time, collapsed around her.

He was back. The Bastard was back. The man that ruined her life. The man that lead to her mother's death. The man that killed Shinji's mother and left him alone to suffer.

The man she had grown to hate more than anyone.

Asuka wanted to cry, and her face showed it. _I can't show weakness. Not to her. Not now._

"I… don't understand."

"We fished him out of the Pacific about a week ago." She said. "The subpoena's been issued already, _in camera_. You could try to challenge it, but I doubt you'll get very far. You're both principal witnesses."

"I…"

The Fed could sense things were going south, so she switched jarringly to some bullshit canned compassion, so fake and contrived it made Asuka want to vomit. "Look, clearly he's hurt you. I read the file, I know what you went through. Maybe you can get some kind of closure through this, at least. Help us help you." Agent Akizuki put her arm on Asuka's shoulder. She recoiled, and the agent withdrew it.

"Anyway, we'll be in touch." She handed her a card, "Call this number by the end of the day and give us your cell number. We'll contact you a few days before we want to meet up. Again, it'll be in Boston, so don't worry about traveling, yet."

The agent wheeled around and walked away, leaving Asuka alone. Before leaving, the Fed gave Asuka a final slap in the face. "And by the way, if you're thinking of hurting yourself again, you should really -"

" ** _FUCK YOU_!** " Asuka screamed, through angry, helpless tears and gritted teeth. The curse echoed off the walls of the cavernous lecture hall. She felt fourteen again, powerless. The Fed got the hint, and quickly scurried off.

Asuka was sitting on the floor when the first students from the next class arrived for their lesson, nearly fifteen minutes later. They gave her a confused and slightly hostile look, so Asuka left silently, almost forgetting her bag on the way out.

* * *

The drive home was silent and uneventful. Asuka drove like a zombie, well under the speed limit. Part of her hoped there would be two fatal car wrecks involving red Mercedes that day, a statistical anomaly, to say the least.

When she finally got home, she saw Shinji laying on the couch, shaking slightly and sobbing. There was a bottle of pills open on the table. When she saw that, she panicked for an instant, but calmed down again when she noticed it was still almost full.

"You heard?" she choked out, quietly, embracing him tightly, allowing herself to break down.

"…yes." His voice was quiet, almost too quiet to hear. She noticed that on the coffee table next to him was some official looking paperwork, similar to the copy she held in her hands. There was also a bottle of soya sauce.

She only nodded, and held him for a while as they silently wept together.

* * *

NOTES:

Is "And so they did" the shortest lemon ever written? Originally that was just a placeholder, but I think it works better than pretty much anything else.

This is probably the best example of a chapter saved in editing. It was absolute shit before, now I think it's presentable. I don't feel as if I have to write a ten page apology for it, so I guess that's a good sign. Maybe it's a testament to my hubris. The support I've gotten so far has made me go insane, clearly. Still, this is the shortest turnaround time I've managed so far, which worries me.

I'm still looking for a beta though. Just drop me a line here if you're up for the task. You don't need to beta all chapters, or even a whole chapter. Work at your own pace, whatever! I'm easy.

As always, if you see any mistakes, spelling, continuity, or canon related, contact me either privately or publically. I want to fix them.

Also, apparently Sachiel attacked yesterday. That ain't good.

Till next time,

Folk Devil


	4. Chapter 4 - Dieu M'en Garde

CHAPTER 4: DIEU M'EN GARDE

" _You know, a long time ago being crazy meant something. Nowadays everybody's crazy."_

 _-Charles Manson_

 **RENE BONAVENTURE**

 **DENVER, COLORADO**

"They did _what?_ " Special Prosecutor Rene Bonaventure was furious. He had just gotten off a four and a half hour flight from New York by way of Montreal. He was groggy and irritable already, and this news certainly did not help. "How the hell could the FBI have fucked this up so badly?" It was only when he was angry or drunk that the guttural, choppy remnants of his _Témiscamingue joual_ shined through his normally impeccable English. Today, he was angry.

"Apparently they made a rookie deliver the news. Some field agent, green as grass. She just got out of Quantico like six months ago. She handled it completely unprofessionally, and in public to boot. Apparently she thought she was a cowboy or something, the poor girl had a breakdown right there in the middle of class." His underling, Aaron Rickover, a highly competent if perpetually badly dressed lawyer, spoke to him over the phone from their offices just across from the UN General Assembly building in New York. "As you can no doubt tell, this sets us back, uh, _considerably._ "

"Jesus Christ, did anybody see?" he asked, "Oh, Jesus, did anybody _film_ it?" The damn kids had cellphone cameras now. "If this leaks…"

"No, thank God. But it was a close call."

"Thank Christ," he said, sitting down on a public bench. He placed his hand on his forehead, as if to signal his frustration and exhaustion to the world. "What's the Fed's name? Tell me there have been _Biblical_ consequences. Old Testament."

"Her name's Akizuki. Apparently she's been placed on disciplinary probation, been riding a desk for a while."

"How long?"

"Didn't say."

"Make them double it." He didn't have time for this. Not now. Not one month before opening statements. "And I want a personal meeting with Director Beatty. I have to stick my foot up his ass. And make _him_ come to _us._ "

"I'll tell Cathy to pencil one in." There was a pause. "I'm sorry boss; ultimately, this was my fault. I was in charge while you were away, so this is my mess to clean up. I can handle it."

"Don't worry about it. You didn't know the FBI would make a rookie, a glorified _fucking_ _mall cop_ bring the most important _fucking_ summons in world history. No one would think they'd be that stupid." A mother nearby covered her child's ears. He felt slightly embarrassed, but he was too frustrated to care much. Besides, he was old. He could do what he wanted. He stood in the middle of the domestic baggage claim area of the Denver International Airport, trying his best to keep the conversation quiet.

"Well, second most important."

"How'd the summons for the Ikari kid go? "

"Substantially better, but the end result is exactly the same. 'Recalcitrant' doesn't even _begin_ to describe these witnesses. They're not returning phone calls, and they still want nothing to do with us. Go figure, huh? The Feds've got surveillance so we can be sure they don't run off or … you know." The younger lawyer mimicked a choking sound.

"Is that really, uh, a thing to be concerned about?" If those kids died…

"Well, there's been at least one suicide attempt on record for the girl. And the boy's apparently worse off psychologically than she is, according to the Private Investigators. Plenty of meds in the house they could do it with, too. You should see their prescription list: valium, prazosin, solian, it's like a friggin' Armenian phonebook. These kids definitely aren't alright. Then again, we have nothing to indicate that they're technically _suicidal_ per se, so we aren't obligated to act yet. It's just something to keep in mind."

"Who's their shrink?"

"No one right now as far as I can tell. The girl was seeing one a couple months ago, irregularly, but those have dropped off completely, no record of her being there in quite some time. Also, the PIs we hired said there're occasional visits to, uh, _shit_ , I don't have the name on hand. I'll email it to you if you want. But from what I understand he's basically a vending machine for pills. Word on the street is that this particular "doctor" will write a script for anything you want. Real shady operation. Lost his license a couple states over, hasn't been caught here yet."

"Forget about the name, it's not important. Have the articling students deal with it." said Rene. "This couldn't have come at a worse time."

"No shit. These kids have been walking on mental eggshells for years, the poor bastards. They were barely holding it together as it was. The Sohryu girl at least could down a job, but she hasn't left the house all week, so I don't know how long that'll last. Neither has Shinji. This whole fiasco set something very dark off in them. I'd have them committed if it didn't raise credibility issues."

Rene sighed again. Credibility issues, the bane of his current existence. This wasn't a jury trial, sympathy alone couldn't win a conviction. The judges adjudicating this were hardnosed, experienced, and largely immune to old prosecutor tricks. They could see right through a sad kid and get right to the bullshit underneath. "See, _this_ is why I came to this hellhole myself. Here's a lesson, kid, don't trust anyone to do your job for you. You just end up doing more work in the end. To fix their mistakes, ya know." He sighed once more for good measure, making sure it was heard over the phone to really drive home his point. "It's looking like I'm going to have to coach them myself."

"Are you serious?"

"We've got no choice. We can't let them slip away. If they fight this subpoena, or break down in the stand at the wrong time, or _Dieu m'en garde_ they fucking _kill themselves_ , then this whole trial is going straight down the shitter. The MAGI deleted most of the paper trail of the Evas themselves, and more than half the material witnesses are dead or in the ocean. None of the NERV brass that flipped was high up enough to get us anything more than circumstantial evidence, half of which is contradictory. We need these kids to say the right things at the right time to get a conviction. They're our most important asset, and unless something changes soon they're our _only_ asset _._ "

He was not looking forward to this. They were already behind schedule. The delaying tactics of these damn kids had prevented them from doing much serious prep work. They didn't know it, but they had the entire government case over a barrel. If they somehow got out of their depression enough to get a lawyer of their own, and challenged the subpoena, it could delay things enough to derail the whole thing. "I already wanted to meet with them personally, anyway. It's just going to have to be more long term now. We need to take a very particular kind of soft approach with them."

"You? Soft?"

Despite everything, he smiled. "You underestimate me. However, this means that I can't devote any more time to drafting the factum. From now on you're in charge of that. Oh, it also means we're going to have to rent some office space in Boston."

"You're sure you don't want to at least review the factum? Like, I _could_ do it, but didn't you say it had to be perfect?" Rene could hear the glee in his underling's voice. Aaron was nothing if not a careerist.

"Yeah. I did. So make it perfect. These kids are the key to everything. They don't give us what we want, we lose. It's that simple." He said, "Anyway, I gotta go. The rental place is going to drop off my car soon, and I want to get to Florence before sundown, if I can. I'll be back in two days. Update me then."

"Sure, Rene. See you soon. Good luck with the interview. And if you want to rough the bastard up a bit, I'm sure no one will care too much." There was a pause as he went to hang up the phone, but then Aaron remembered something. "Oh, shit, I forgot to ask, how was your mom?"

He had been away from the office for a week visiting his dying mother, who had finally been moved to a hospice less than a week ago, in his hometown of Rouyn-Noranda. He flew in direct from Quebec, only stopping in New York for a one-hour layover. "She's on her last legs. Doctors say she's… well, let's put it this way, they're not stingy with the morphine no more. She didn't look too good. Real frail. Nothing she says makes sense. Didn't even recognize me. Just keeps saying weird religious shit. ' _Notre Dame, Notre Dame, la Sainte Vierge!_ ' over and over. Screaming it, even. Her mind's completely gone. The dementia's… well, it's sad. It's been a few years now, even before the Impact. Never this bad though. Priest even came in to give Last Rites while I was home, but she stabilized, so he left. Either way, they don't think she's got long."

"Sorry to hear that."

"Forget it, she's ninety-two. It's her time to go. Claudette's already got the lawyers involved over the house. She can hardly _wait_ for our mother to die." He sighed. "I'll see you on Wednesday; we can start cleaning this mess up."

"Yeah, boss."

He flipped the phone shut and put it away. The phone was outdated by several years, but it served Rene just fine. In his heart, he was a utilitarian. He had little sentimentality left in his old body. He had simply seen too much over the years. Any romanticism left in him had been strangled and left in a shallow grave in Bosnia.

He had been a lawyer for exactly forty years, and a war crimes specialist for thirty. He cut his teeth in the Balkans and Africa, and had even prosecuted some of the top Third World War officials that weren't granted an exemption by the Valentine's treaty. He was hands on, with a penchant to visiting the sites of atrocities himself, something that his colleagues in the Hague had no stomach for. To Rene, it was impossible to understand human darkness from a plush office in Belgium. You couldn't understand a man that could slaughter a busload of boys by reading about him, you had to see their bodies. You had to go out on a rickety pickup truck, way out in the bush. The hinterlands, the dark corners of the world. The Serbs called it _vukojebina:_ "Where the wolves fuck." That's where the secrets were.

 _Gravesite 88: Thirty-two to thirty-four juvenile bodies, partially decayed, located in one grave, four miles east of Gravesite 29. Forensic report indicates callouses on hands, digging implements found nearby. Possibility that juveniles dug grave trench themselves. Signs of malnourishment. Bullet-wounds in back of each head._

 _It's weird,_ Rene thought, _The Hague and those Bosnian killing fields are both underwater now._

He was in a new, darker corner now. He was here to meet with Gendo Ikari, the man he had been assigned to prosecute years ago, contingent, of course, on if he ever came out of the water. This was by far his largest case to date and it was surely his last. As soon as the ink was dry on Ikari's sentence, Bonaventure was retiring. He had had enough.

His job paid well enough, but he didn't really need money anymore. He lived alone, in a small apartment in Manhattan. He had had a house before, but since Roisin died, he hadn't needed anything that big. He had been with his wife since he was in college, working in Derry (or Londonderry, depending on who you asked), as an intern with some NGO, supervising elections during the Troubles. One of his first International Law gigs. She was the only woman he had been in any sort of steady relationship with, before or since.

They were happy together; their marriage had lasted for nearly fifty years. Through Second Impact, through World War Three, through the post-war trials that he had worked on, they had been together. They really had no other family. She was orphaned at a young age, and had no one left in Ireland. He was not close to his mother, or his sister, Claudette, who he had hated since he was a teenager. They had no children. All they had was each other.

Then, Third Impact happened.

He came out of the ocean.

She didn't.

* * *

He claimed his bag at the carrousel and began to walk down DIA's meticulously cleaned hallways. Since Third Impact, Denver was, by far, the largest city in the Western United States, outranking even pre-war Los Angeles. Any farther west and things got dicey. Denver was the refuge of first resort for most of the people fleeing east. They worked odd jobs or scrounged to get by, hoping desperately to get an East Coast Pass. Even if Denver was relatively safe, there were no jobs here. No money.

Despite the size of the airport, and despite the fact that Denver itself had ballooned in size in the past five years, the airport was strangely empty. Rene, who traveled here often enough to be familiar with its layout, noticed that DIA never seemed to get much use. The fact that the airport stood on the equivalent landmass of two Manhattans made it seem even more empty and foreboding. Sterile, almost. The fact that the small crowd of people that had been at baggage claim with him had thinned out to almost nothing made Rene feel like he was the only one there.

But he wasn't. He passed by one of the airport's famously inappropriate murals: a man in pseudo-Nazi gear brandishing a scimitar next to a long line of dead children, with a burning city in the background, and stopped. Not for the mural, he had seen it enough times that it barely even registered to him, but for the man that was standing there.

He had an imposing figure: tall, muscular in a malnourished sort of way, and completely bald. Not bald in an old man sort of way like Rene himself, who still had a few scraps of hair clinging to the back of his head like the ruins of some lost civilization, but completely clean shaven. Even the eyebrows. The amount of effort to maintain that must have been immense. His skin was covered in tattoos, mostly blue, red or black ink, which formed obscure, almost arcane patterns. Like a mix of alchemical manuals, subway graffiti, and children's scribbling. It was difficult to look at any one part of the fleshy canvas, he was so utterly covered. They were like the mad notes of a schizophrenic, all jumbled and overlapping, but done in tattoo ink. They were obviously not professional. Maybe prison tattoos? Either way they seemed recent. There was another one on his arm that seemed older and didn't fit with the pattern. Rene recognized the symbol, Fourth Infantry Division. _A war vet._

The man seemed to be staring off into space, at nothing in particular. As far as Rene could tell, they were the only two people in the cavernous room. The crowd had thinned away to nothing, strange for this time of day. There was a palpable aura of hostility around him.

Rene tried, vaguely, to place him. His work prosecuting war criminals in the 2000s had required him to memorize a vast wealth of knowledge on troop placements in the Third World War: which units were stationed at which battles and the like. He had no particular interest in the mechanics of war, they were just another fact pattern to him.

 _Based on his age, he's definitely a Third World War vet. Fourth Infantry… let's see… Eastern European Theater, spring of 2000. Oh Jesus. Probably stationed on the Dnieper. That meat grinder._

He was mouthing something to himself, slowly, deliberately. It wasn't chanting, which Rene thought it was at first. It was more like a conversation that he was having with himself. The man seemed to be rocking back and forth, gently, lost in his own little world. His hands were shaking slightly, as if he could not quite control them.

This odd behavior was not particularly surprising, half-spun war vets were a dime a dozen these days. On nearly every corner they would be there, begging, or just ranting, their minds broken for almost a decade.

He was not a man that Rene particularly wanted to talk to. And yet, deep inside Rene felt a feeling that he at first dismissed as dark curiosity, which then blossomed to a full blown _urge_ to understand the man. It was as if there were meat-hooks lodged in his brain, drawing him in. In the hours after their encounter, Rene would try to offer some sort of plausible explanation to himself to justify his own behavior here, but the truth is he could find none. There was simply a sort of odd, yet indescribably powerful animal magnetism to the man. There was the unspoken promise of a deep revelation there, drawing Rene in like a moth to a flame. Unlike a moth, though, Rene knew very well that the man could, and probably would, burn him.

"Hell of a mural, eh?" said Rene. "Bit, uh, inappropriate for an airport if you ask me." He attempted casualness here, for some reason. It was totally inappropriate, but Rene was unsure of how, exactly, to introduce himself to a probably schizophrenic. He certainly wasn't trying to befriend the man, he just needed something to defuse his own nervousness.

"It is totally appropriate for _this_ airport." said the man. His voice was smooth and soothing, like butter. It was far deeper than Rene expected, but not overpowering. It was completely foreign to his appearance, which was, frankly, freakish. "You are Rene Bonaventure. The lawyer." It wasn't a question.

 _How the hell does he know my name?_ Rene was frightened. How could he not be? But the comment seemed to confirm his initial suspicion that the weirdo knew something.

It was then that he noticed his eyes. They were piercing blue, deep, and impossible to look away from. But they were utterly dead, as if some spark, some fundamental humanity, had gone out inside. "I uh… did you see me on the news, or something?"

The man seemed to think for a second, as if to think of some kind of plausible lie. "…yes. The news." He cleared his throat, and, lacking any discernable sense of propriety, spat on the floor. "Since you're here already, I have a proposition for you."

Christ, this freak wanted him doing _favors_ for him now? "What is it?"

"I need a license to live on the East Coast. You can help me obtain it."

"You should talk to an internal immigration lawyer about that, I do something a bit different." He wanted to turn to walk away, but his feet wouldn't let him. He felt paralyzed.

"Yes. War crimes. You are here to meet with Gendo Ikari." Again, how the hell did he know that? Clearly there were some very big leaks in the office, if even this freak knew who he was and why he was here. He would have to speak to Aaron about it when he got back. Unless… "Even so, your signature will suffice. You are a very prestigious man." He rummaged in a dirty looking backpack, which was his only luggage, and pulled out a page. "The paperwork is already filled out. I need a witness of your standing to notarize it. Nothing more."

"I wish I could help you, but…" _No, I have time,_ said a voice. He was pretty sure it was his own, but it seemed to come from the aether, like his own internal narrator speaking to him from outside. _You're in no rush. You can fill out some paperwork. Gendo Ikari can wait._ "What do you need an East Coast Pass for?"

"I am going to Boston. I have friends already living there already. They are preparing for my arrival, and they... require guidance. You will give me your signature, correct?"

 _No. Of course not, fuck off._ His own voice again. But instead, he said, dreamily, "Yeah, I might as well." It sounded as if the words weren't even his, but he said it, he was sure of it.

What the hell was he doing? Why did he say that? Was he insane? By vouching for someone on an East Coast Pass, he was essentially making himself responsible for this nut-job. His good name was on the line, and he had little reason to put any stock in this man's credibility. This was a _very_ bad idea.

But despite these misgivings, his hand was already in his pocket, grabbing his pen as if it had a mind of its own. "Pass me the papers." He said the words lazily, as if in a dream. He wanted to rebel, to throw the papers away, but he simply could not bring himself to do it. He put them against the mural to sign them, right at the tip of the storm trooper's scimitar. It was then that he realized he didn't even ask the name of the man he was signing for.

"Laffey. My name is Jack Laffey." said the man, who was looking through Rene, but not at him. Rene never got to ask his question. He just _knew._

"Where, exactly, are you from?" _Hell?_

"California, originally. But I've been living in Nevada for some time with my… friends. The ones that are waiting for me in Boston. They went ahead of me." He sniffed. "I believe the universe intended for us to meet this day."

"Well, it certainly was your lucky day. I don't normally do things like this, and I'm not quite sure why I…" he stopped speaking, thinking better of it. There was no point in salvaging any pride here, he had clearly been beaten. "Just don't go doing anything bad, kid, or I'll draw shit for it." It was more a plea than an order.

"I will not disappoint you, Monsieur Bonaventure." _Oh, he speaks French, too._ Laffey breathed in deeply, far too deeply. "The universe _did_ intend for us to meet today. And it intends that we'll meet again someday. Soon, I think."

"Yeah, sure. Soon." He was growing tired of weirdo, and already fully regretted signing the papers. It was almost as if the wool was pulled off his eyes, and some semblance of judgement had returned to him. He noticed, then, that Laffey's breath was _terrible._ All his teeth were rotten or chipped. Clearly he had not been to a dentist in some time. Also, despite his clean-shaven appearance, the man was _filthy._ He smelled like a mix of incense and incest: patchouli, gunpowder, and poverty. Spoiled milk, peyote, and death. His fingernails were long and cracked, as if they hadn't been cut in weeks. It was weird to such a lack of personal hygiene from a man that obviously invested a lot of time in shaving his body hair. _Why, then, does he speak like an aristocrat?_

Clearly, Rene had not been thinking straight in vouching for him. _We'll meet soon alright. In a fucking police station, when I'm called in to bail your ass out, trying to give a good explanation why I vouched for you._ An explanation he couldn't hope to give.

" _Au revoir_ , _Monsieur Bonaventure_." The accent was unbelievably Parisian, far removed from Rene's own backwoods North Quebec miner-speak, which he couldn't shake despite the fact that he had not lived in his hometown for nearly five decades. Again, it was weirdly formal for someone that was quite obviously a yokel.

" _Oui_ ," replied Rene. It sounded more like 'wah,' " _à plus."_

At that, Laffey wheeled around almost comically and walked away. Every limb of his looked as if it operated entirely independently in some sort of loose confederation, making his gate completely alien. He seemed to disappear entirely behind some sort of column. Strangely enough, as soon as he was out of sight, people started to appear, going about their business as they had before, making the airport feel occupied once again.

The entire meeting felt as if it had taken place in some ambiguous space half way between dream and reality. The peculiar man was _real,_ to be sure, and yet…

Rene shook his head, questioning his own sanity.

"What the hell have I done?" He said, to no one in particular.

* * *

His car was late, so Rene was forced to mill about the entrance of the airport for some time. By now, he could only vaguely remember his encounter with Jack Laffey. He remembered the general gist of the encounter, but he felt and unsure, as if he were remembering something done in a drunken stupor the night before, half remembered and hazy.

Surrounding him were the two categories of people one was likely to see at an airport entrance. The majority were tired, busy people who were in a rush to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible, and the minority were people with nothing better to do but harass the people in the first category.

One was a Filipina girl, young and pretty, wearing a lei-like garland of flowers around her neck handing out pamphlets. She gave a warm "God loves you!" to everyone she handed a brochure to. Most crumpled them and threw them on the ground, unwilling to hear the new gospel.

It was Rene's turn. "God loves you!" she said. "He has a plan for you!"

"Uh, thanks." _Where the hell is the car?_

He looked at the pamphlet. It was all black, except for the logo of the _Iglesia ni mga Angheles_ , which consisted of a cross, with three eyes along the cross bar: one black, one blue, and one red. The cross stood against the backdrop of a red ocean. The only text on the front cover read "WHO IS LILITH? WHAT IS HER PLAN FOR YOU?"

Inside, the brochure read: "THE RAPTURE IS OVER – THE TRIBULATION HAS BEGUN! THE BEAST WALKS AMONG US! CHRIST HAS RETURNED! " Then below it, "REMEMBER, YOU **CHOSE** TO RETURN! FIND OUT WHY AT OUR FREE DISCOVERY CAMP. CALL FOR DETAILS." They listed a phone number which Rene had no intention of calling.

 _I chose to come back_. So why didn't Roisin? Did she not know that he had returned? Did he not know she wanted to stay? Why did his mother return, if she was already old, frail, and riddled with dementia?

When they fished his mother out of Lac Noranda, she had nearly drowned, too weak to swim. It was a good thing she returned around the same time that most did, a few weeks after the event, when the SQ boats were out on the lake 24/7. Last he had heard, they didn't even bother anymore. The priority now was cleaning up the LCL, rerouting it to the large northern section of the lake devoted to tailings from the massive gold mine that, to this day, dominated the town. Dredged out and mixed with cyanide. If anyone returned they'd probably be poisoned immediately, but no one had come out of Lac Osisko in more than two years.

Still, it seemed wrong to Rene. The fact that he was even here right now, to see Gendo Ikari, proved that people still came back sometimes:

" _You know," his sister, Claudette said to him at dinner last week, in Rouyn-Noranda while Rene was home for his mother's vigil. "I was at the dépanneur a couple months ago, picking up some beer for St. Jean Baptiste weekend. On sale, tsé. Anyway," she used the English word. "I ran into Gilles Arleux there. Helped me carry the cases back to my car. Remember, from school? He was the one that hit you with the ice-ball that one time behind the church right before mass, back when it was still at Saint Michel Archange. I think you were in Grade 4 or something. Remember, Rene? You cried and cried, 'cause you got blood all over your new coat." She began to laugh. Well, cackle really. "Mum reddened your arse bad for that one! Even made you go take confession!" Her laughs got louder, filling the room, as if it were the funniest thing in the world._

 _Claudette's son, and Rene's nephew, Guy Glenevis, joined in the laughter. He was an occasional handyman, forty-three years old, with little to show for it except credit card debt and two asshole kids both of whom, unfortunately, came back from the lake early. Guy was at one time "semi-professional" defenseman "on the traveling team and everything." He hadn't done much, really, since a concussion in the beautifully named town of Asbestos ended his very mediocre sports career. He was sired by Claudette's second husband, who she divorced sometime in the late 90s. Rene had convicted no less than twenty war criminals in his time as a UN prosecutor. He had been to no less than forty countries, had met heads of state, and had even spoken at the General Assembly. But Guy outranked him in the family hierarchy, despite the fact that he had only been outside of Quebec once, to some Peewee tournament in Timmins in '94._

 _As they laughed, Rene just sat there, quietly suppressing rage. He did that a lot, whenever he was at home. His mother, for her part, was oblivious to the fact that they were discussing her at all. She was upstairs, screaming her half-understandable prayers to the Virgin Mary. The delusional ranting mixed with the laughter to create disturbing cacophony. Rene hardly noticed. After a few days of his being there, her constant praying had simply begun to blend into the background noise._

 _The laughter died down, and Claudette's face got serious again. "Anyway, I got to talking to Gilles a bit. His son, uh, Julien I think, is a cop. Nice boy, used to be on Guy's team. Gilles says his son does the skidoo patrol in the winter, sees all sorts of crazy shit." Their mother's screaming got louder, causing Claudette to raise her own voice to compensate. "Says there's a whole bunch of bodies at the bottom of the lake. Dozens of them, even. Says they can see them through the ice sometimes, in the shallow spots. They float up, eh, right up against the ice. You really see them in the spring when the snow starts to come off, and it's glare all the way down. They think they're from the ones that come back in the winter, when it's frozen."_

Rene snapped out of the memory. That conversation kept running in his head, over and over again. The whole eight-hour drive from Rouyn-Noranda to Montreal, he had obsessed over it. Try as he might to shove the thoughts way, Rene kept seeing the newly returned in his mind's eye, struggling to claw through the ice, only for the water to take them. Reborn only to die again. When he passed over the St. Lawrence, blue again after a massive dredging effort, he wondered how many bodies lay under there, undiscovered. Did their families know they were dead? Or did they wait in vain, obliviously waiting for the call informing them that their loved ones had been fished out and dried off, and were waiting to be picked up?

Was Roisin still in the water after all? Or was she dead, permanently?

Still, the thought confirmed one thing to Rene: The cults were full of shit. No God would send someone back just to let them drown, and certainly no one would _choose_ that fate. He crumpled the paper, just like everybody else, and trod it underfoot. He began to smoke a cigarette fitfully, hoping to calm his suddenly tense nerves.

 _They're lying, exploiting a tragedy. That's all_.

That's what he wanted to believe, at least.

It was less painful, that way.

* * *

The car finally arrived, almost an hour late. It was driven by a tiny Japanese man, who spoke no English and accepted no tip. Which was good, because he didn't deserve one. It was already five, and it would about wo hours to drive down I-85 to Florence.

As he drove away, he noticed the large, white, tent-like structure of the airport cut an imposing figure against the massive storm clouds rolling in from the west. It was a good thing he took the earlier flight, chances are he wouldn't be able make it in at all. It looked like tornado weather.

As he drove, he listened to the radio, hoping for some kind of forecast: "-without bail in an apparent case of road-rage turned deadly. Police in Boston say the suspect suddenly and deliberately crashed his own car into a Dodge Caravan. They then say that he retrieved a tire iron and beat thirty-eight year old Alison Lexington to death with a tire iron, while her injured children were in the backseat. Traffic was reduced to a single lane, causing major delays." A pause. "Weather forecasts indicate major thunderstorms with possible tornado activity in the Denver metropolitan area. All flights to and from Denver International Airport have been cancelled or delayed. Residents are cautioned to exercise extreme caution."

Just as the weather was starting to pick up, he arrived in Florence. Thunder boomed in the distance, but the air was ominously dead. Every so often, however, the wind would pick up, causing the trees to sway back and forth. The sky was black, but apparently there was still supposed to be an hour of daylight left.

The town was tiny. Classic single-industry shit-hole, all tract housing and kitsch. It kind of reminded Rene of home. Except there were no mountains, only low, rocky hills, turned black from the smog and acid rain. Everyone who lived here was a prison guard or the child of a prison guard. It was a weird sort of place. The air itself was oppressive; this was a real prison town.

He checked into his accommodations for the night. A shitty chain motel with branches all over the country. It was Spartan, but it would do. He just wanted to sleep. He grabbed a burger and a few beers at the adjacent bar, which, of course, was prison themed. The locals eyed him suspiciously. He was an outsider in a suit, the worst kind of thing to be in a town like this, except maybe a perp. As he drank, it thundered outside. Last call came early, because the power went out. Probably for the best, he had to be up early the next day.

He was able to get into his room because, thank God, it still used a real key. He wanted to review his notes a bit, make sure he knew what questions he was going to ask the next day, but it was too dark and there was no way to turn the lights back on. He wondered if it was safe. There was no basement here, and the walls didn't look particularly sturdy. _Fuck it, if there's a tornado, there's a tornado. Hope it wipes the whole damn place out._

As he slept, he dreamt. He dreamt of his mother, looming over him, rage in her eyes as she wielded his father's belt like a bullwhip, buckle-end out. His coat, stained with blood from an ice-ball thrown by a boy eight years Rene's senior, soaked in the kitchen sink as his sister peered out from behind a corner. She was terrified and yet strangely satisfied that it was her brother, not her, that was receiving the beating tonight. His cries mingled with the sound of the Habs game coming from the tiny black and white TV where his father, who as a rule never hit Rene or his sister, was passed out in his chair, drunk again on cheap rye. His cheap cigarette still smoldered between his fingers; he was dead to the world.

The Canadiens had at least won that game. Hell, they even won the Cup that year; beat the Red Wings in seven games. Rene never cared much about sports, but he had always remembered that. His father would not live to see it. Within a month, Marc-Andre Bonaventure would catch his foot in a crook while mucking out a collapsed ore pocket, causing him to fall 3,000 feet straight down an elevator shaft. After that, his only protector, imperfect as he was, was gone. Despite his age, Rene was a pall bearer at his dad's funeral. It was strange, the coffin was far lighter than he expected, and his father was, after all, a big man. Decades later, Rene found out why. In a dark curiosity, Rene called up some files from the Ministry of Mines, investigating the accident. Apparently, they only ever found a few of his body parts, scattered over an area a kilometer wide.

The rest were still down there, hidden somewhere in the darkness.

* * *

They called it the Alcatraz of the Rockies. The name didn't do it justice. Florence ADX was, by far, the most secure prison in the United States. Built in 1994, it had never had an escape. It was designed like a reverse castle, meant to keep inmates in rather than outsiders out. Its hallways were deliberately confusing, meant to befuddle prisoners on the inside and keep them from planning any sort of escape. No one who was inside the prison knew exactly where they were situated. No one was allowed to talk to other prisoners. The cells were sparse, and soundproof to prevent any sort of communication. Prisoners stayed there twenty-three hours of the day, in total isolation. One former warden described it as a "cleaner version of Hell."

"There are a few rules you have to remember," said his escort: a short, stocky guard with glasses, no neck, and a buzz-cut. "No touching, no gifts, no weapons or anything that could be used as a weapon. And we're gonna have to do a search on you before you go in." He produced a metal detector wand. "Arms out."

The wand beeped. "It's probably my keys," said Rene. "Sorry, I forgot to take them out of my pocket."

The guard eyed him suspiciously. Rene dropped his keys into the metal bucket with his other possessions. "The belt too." said the guard. "It's got a metal buckle, plus you're not allowed ligatures. That means you're also gonna have to leave your tie here."

He took it off. He felt slightly naked. "Can I keep my shoelaces?"

"That you can keep, but make sure they're tied tightly and _do not_ take off your shoes under any circumstances." he said, "It'd be a damn shame if Ikari hung _himself_ before _we_ can hang him."

"It's an ICC trial, no death penalty."

The guard only snorted in derision at that. He then quickly barked a confirmation that Rene had arrived into a walkie-talkie. "Okay, you can go on through. Cell sixty-four. You can't miss it. There's a visitor's screen we just installed right in it. Plexiglass. We don't like to let 'em in the old visitor's room anymore, too much bullshit to move 'em, ya know. You have forty-five minutes, exactly, so make it count."

"Okay. Where's his counsel?"

"Huh? Oh, shit, they didn't tell you? Ikari didn't want his lawyer present. He said he just wants it to be you and him. Beats me why."

"Did anyone tell him that that was a _very_ bad idea?"

"He made his choice, he's a grownup. Hell, he blew up the damn world twice. I think he can make his own decisions."

He buzzed him through, and the massive, bomb-shelter like door swung open. The hallway smelled like bleach, sterile. Everything was silent. Prisons were supposed to be loud, noisy affairs. Not here. They called this cellblock "Bomber's Row." Timothy McVeigh had been here. Ramzi Youseff had been here. And now Gendo Ikari was here. He was the _only_ one here. Every other cell in the block was empty. Gendo Ikari was the only inmate in this part of the prison.

There was another guard, that looked almost identical to the first, standing outside the cell. "I'm officer Davis. I'm here to monitor your conversation, and ensure your own safety."

"You related to the other guy?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind." Rene said. "I'm ready."

Gendo Ikari was shorter than he expected. The man that had contributed to, or engineered, the deaths of five and a half billion people in the two of the greatest crimes ever committed, sat quietly in the corner of his cell, staring at the wall. There was something underwhelming about him, he seemed more middle-manager than genocidal maniac. Still… he radiated a sort of quiet authority. And besides, Rene had been in the business long enough to know that appearances were deceptive.

"You're late." said Ikari, who didn't bother to look at him. He seemed to be far more interested in the wall, which he was staring at intensely.

"Good, you speak English. It said in your file that you did, so I didn't bring a translator." said Rene, flipping through his notes. He was going into prosecutor mode. All distractions were shut off. It was just him and his prey here. Hunter, and hunted. "Why didn't you want your own counsel present? You do understand that I'm trying to convict you, correct?"

Ikari finally looked at him, staring deep into his eyes. He wore glasses, large, plastic and googly, clearly prison issued. "I have reason to believe my defense lawyer's intentions aren't entirely… _identical_ to my own."

"You know you can fire them right?"

Ikari didn't respond. _Fine. Play it that way. That's the last free legal advice you're getting from me._ "How are you doing?"

"My cell is quite inhumane."

"You have a TV and everything." said Rene, gesturing to the tiny, clear television set sitting behind another plexiglass window on the far side of the windowless cell. There was some kind of Televangelist program on, muted, and filmed in the late 80s or possibly early 90s. An old, probably southern man was gesticulating at the altar, bleeding charisma. Behind him was a blood red cross, covered entirely in sequins. To his left, a Christian rock band played. To his right was a seemingly endless line of cripples, queuing to be healed by the power of the Holy Spirit. A middle aged man, probably about Rene's age, came up to the altar with a cane. The preacher-man grabbed it theatrically and snapped it over his knee. He was healed. _Hallelujah._

Rene had noticed that they occasionally cut to people in the crowd, whose arms were outstretched in religious ecstasy, muttering supposedly divinely inspired nonsense words. Old time religion, real snake-handler shit. There was none of the Catholic austerity that he had been raised with, but pure showmanship. Something about the preacher reminded Rene of the man he had seen in the airport. That ability to control people, to hypnotise them. Was it the work of the divine? Was it sorcery? Or was it fraud?

"Oh. That. I muted it. That is the only channel available to me. I find it most… distasteful."

"Can't argue with you there." He sat down at a small plastic chair set up across the plexiglass window that divided them. It reminded him of the gorilla cage at a zoo, there was a real separation there, almost like they were on the phone or something. He pulled out his tape-recorder, an ancient device that he had had since he had begun to practice law and set it on the table. The damn thing still used tape, and it was scratched all to hell from years of heavy use. But it had been with him all over the world: from Belgrade to Brazzaville, so he had a certain sentimental attachment to it. He struggled with the little switch on the side for an uncomfortably long period of time, until finally the tape deck started turning.

"So, Ikari. Let's talk brass tacks. Though it may be meaningless to you, you are in prison after all, we're short on time. So I'll be brief. From what I've read, you've been giving my neckless compatriots out there, and the detectives, a hard time in every interrogation you've been through. Stonewalling them. You're a hard nut to crack. I expected as much. Still, it must be a difficult act to keep up, they've been at it for _weeks._ "

Ikari's expression did not change. "I believe the Fifth Amendment gives me the right not to incriminate myself. This is an American prison, is it not? I have the benefit of the American constitution?"

"Technically."

"Then I intend to use it. I am not in the business of giving you the rope to hang me with. If you expect me to talk about my time at NERV, you will be disappointed."

Bonaventure shook his head. "That's not what I'm here for. If you wouldn't give _them_ anything on NERV, you won't give _me_ anything on NERV. That's fine. I expect you to make me _work_ for my retirement fund. I'm not a detective, I'm not interested in investigating the nuts and bolts of the uh, what did you call it, _Instrumentality Project?_ Weird name. No, I delegate that responsibility to investigators far more capable than I. My job, by and large, is merely to summarize the fruits of their labour." He stood up again. "No _,_ I'm here to talk about _you,_ Mr. Ikari. To see the man behind the charges. Who, exactly, are you? What makes you tick? Why did you do what you did?" Bonaventure smiled, his yellow, smoke-stained teeth glistening, "or _allegedly_ did?" He sat back down, well, flopped, really. He had surprising springiness to his movements now, he had an energy that simply wasn't there when he wasn't in _the zone._ In truth, he got high off it.

Ikari merely shrugged. "If this is some gambit–"

"No gambit. No tricks. I don't work like that. This is only half about you, anyway. I'm just laying a foundation here. You ever been to a seafood restaurant?"

Ikari looked at him quizzically. "Yes."

"Well, you don't eat a lobster unless you pick it out yourself. See the bastard in person -" Bonaventure smiled again, wider this time, "- before you boil him alive."

"I do not care for lobster. They are bottom feeders. Filthy animals." Ikari almost smiled himself. Almost. "Do you intend to boil me alive, Mr. Bonaventure? Refreshing, that you make your intentions so clear. "

"I figure I owe you the courtesy. I respect you, in a weird way. From what you were able to accomplish in such a short time. Ghastly, yes, but impressive all the same. From what I've seen, you came from nothing."

Ikari said nothing. He just stared. Bonaventure made a note of it. Flattery would _not_ soften this man up. Not that he was attempting to soften Ikari, his remarks were genuine. Still, it was strange. Most megalomaniacs, the type of men that usually committed war crimes, liked nothing more than praise, even if it was backhanded. In truth, most of the men, (and, for some reason, it always _was_ men) that Bonaventure had dealt with over the years were little more than street thugs. The title of "war criminal" elevated their acts to something oddly _noble,_ almost, undeservedly. Their crimes were the most base imaginable.

Ikari did not fit that description. Power? He didn't care about it. He could tell just by looking at him. He carried himself almost humbly, but with a quiet dignity. Bonaventure took a different tack.

"What, exactly, do you hope to accomplish?" Bonaventure asked, finally. "What's your best case scenario here? Even if, somehow, you get off, do you really think the world out _there_ will care? That's half the reason I never gave you a plea deal. The public wouldn't accept anything less than the maximum sentence, which is a hell of a lot lighter than what they'd give you."

Ikari, once again, said nothing. Then, finally, after thinking it over for some time he said, "I know from experience that thinking too far ahead often backfires."

"So you're a live in the moment kind of guy. Interesting."

Ikari shook his head. "I would not say _that."_

Bonaventure sighed. He picked up a figurative olive branch and held it out, one last appeal to sanity. "Look, Ikari. Maybe you should just plead guilty. I know I'm your prosecutor, not your defense lawyer, but still… you'd be saving a lot of people a lot of pain. You don't really think you can _win,_ do you?"

Ikari said grimly, "Even if my fate is a foregone conclusion, I _will_ _not surrender._ I will _not_ run away. It's… unseemly. So no, Mr. Bonaventure. I will have my trial. I will not give you an inch."

Was that that old Japanese sense of honour coming out? Ikari didn't look like the type of guy that would subscribe too much to old cultural trends, but then again… No. It wasn't that. This was a personal code. A creed he lived by. It wasn't honour he was after. So _what?_

"Fine. Have it your way." Bonaventure pulled out his notes. "I've been looking a bit into your history. Some things that don't quite add up. I figure I should hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak, while I have the chance. Clarify things. Do you have a moment?" He didn't wait for the response. "Ikari isn't your original last name, is it? It was Rokubungi at first."

"Yes." Said Ikari, nonplussed.

"So why did you change it?" asked Rene, already knowing the answer.

"Marriage."

"Is that how it works in Japan? The man takes the woman's name? How progressive."

"It's more common than here, but it is by no means the norm." he said. "I have never been one for social conventions."

"That much is clear, Mr Ikari." Bonaventure grinned, no teeth this time. "So, let's talk about your wife. Yui." Ikari flinched. Whatever he was expecting, he wasn't expecting this. "You met in school, right? University of Kyoto, class of, uh… '99. Hell of a year, the last good year we ever had, wouldn't you agree?" Ikari, again, said nothing. Bonaventure made a show of leaning into his notes, playing with his spectacles a bit. "Says here she was born in 1977. That's ten years younger than you. Hell, I even got a nephew born that year. You like 'em young, Ikari?"

Ikari seemed angry, but only slightly so, at that remark. "You're being vulgar. Stop."

"Sorry, sorry. No judgement here. But, I gotta say, I'm a bit confused about some of the things surrounding this girl. Specifically, the fact that she doesn't seem to have existed at all. The only government records mentioning her at all are your son's birth certificate. No marriage certificate, no record of enrolment at Kyoto University, no driver's license, hell, not even a birth _or_ death certificate of her own. And nothing in the GEHIRN files, such as they are, either. Aside from a brief note in a fucking _tour pamphlet_ we dug up. Otherwise, nothing. Did you marry a ghost, Ikari?"

At that, he merely shrugged. "I cannot be held responsible for poor record keeping."

"Well, speaking of record keeping, let's talk a bit about your bank accounts. Gendo Rokubungi in 1998 had the equivalent of $2000 USD in his bank account, unemployed, no family, and was basically aimless. Long string of convictions though, mostly petty shit. A real thug. Mr. Rokubungi certainly wasn't enrolled at Kyoto University. In fact, you were _never_ enrolled at Kyoto University. Your wife wasn't either, but we'll get back to that." Another grin, as he paused for effect. "Like I said, you came from nothing. Now, let's compare Mr. Rokubungi to his alter-ego. Gendo _Ikari_ in 2000 had, well, I don't even know how to pronounce that many zeros. I was never a math major. And that's just your public accounts. We've tracked down a few of your offshore accounts, the ones that weren't frozen, anyway. Any one of those would make a Saudi prince blanche. You get some good investment advice, Ikari? Win a couple lotteries?"

"I fail to see how this is relevant to my supposed culpability in the Third Impact." said Ikari. "And to be honest your tone is becoming tiring."

 _You little shit._ He slammed the book down. "Oh, I _know_ you fucking sparked the Third Impact, Ikari. Second, too. I already got all the proof I need from other sources." lied Bonaventure, "I told you already, I'm not here for that. I don't _care_ about that. Not today, at least. I care about _you,_ and how you got to the position where you _could_ spark off the Third Impact. And I care about the people that helped you get to that position, because you sure as shit didn't do it alone."

Ikari smiled, for real this time. "I see your game. This interview isn't about _this_ case…"

"I'm just curious about how a punk, a fucking _poche,_ with no job, no connections, and no prospects suddenly becomes one of the richest men in the world. How he goes from a high-school dropout, with shit grades in science by the way, to the head of GEHIRN in one year. Everything seems to lead through Yui. You marry her in '99, that same year you're in Antarctica, leading some expedition. Next year, the world blows up. It's obvious she had something to do with the whole thing. Unfortunately, she died of… well, _something_ …" he let the point hang, "sometime in 2004. And we only know _that_ from a grave stone. There's no death certificate." He paused. "She _is_ dead, right?"

No response. It was like interviewing a fucking brick wall now. He glanced at the clock. Jesus Christ, thirty minutes gone already. He was running out of time.

"Do you have something better to do than talk to me, Mr. Ikari? Watch TV? Jerk off?" He was getting too hostile now, and he could sense it. A rookie mistake. He knew better than this, so he eased off, bipolar style. "Look … it's obvious you don't want to talk to me. That's fine. I wouldn't want to talk to me either. Your lawyer would tell you not to talk to me." He pulled out a photocopy of a photograph, scanned from a newspaper. It was blurry, a man stood at a podium, holding papers, trying to speak to a massive crowd of people. "There are people still out there that had something to do with this. You're a scapegoat. Someone is very glad that you're keeping silent on this." He pointed to a figure. "Do you know who that is?"

Ikari eyed the photo passively. "Hideki Izumo."

"The Prime Minister of Japan, at least until a few months later when he blew his own brains out in March of 2001, after he lost the election. Suicide, apparently. You'se guys call it _sepukku_ right? I've been told the word _hari-kari-"_ he pronounced it 'harry-carry.' "- is incorrect or something." No response, _great_. "The point is that that's _you_ , there in the background, just a few steps away from him. This was right after Second Impact." He pointed to a small figure in the back, barely noticeable, wearing a dark suit and sunglasses. Anyone else would've missed him, anyone not looking for him.

Rene pulled out another photo. "This one's even earlier. 1999, fairly early in the year, so it must've been pretty close to when you met Yui." He reached for the tape recorder and flipped it off. "Whoops." It was a picture of a dinner. All present were wearing formal dining wear, balloons festooned the background. A sign read "COWPENS 2000! A NEW KIND OF PRESIDENT FOR A NEW KIND OF MILLENNIUM" Ikari would've blended into the crowd, if not for those eyes. "Why do you have such a talent for showing up near world leaders, Ikari? Why were you at this dinner?"

Ikari shrugged. The earlier levity was back. It was just a friendly conversation, after all. "I was hungry. They were serving dinner." There was something very _wise-guy-_ esque about him. He was like an old mob-boss, unwilling to break _omerta_ for anything. Strange, for a supposed scientist facing life behind bars.

"At ten thousand dollars a plate. Sitting at the same table as a future _four-term fucking president."_

"It was good food." He deadpanned. "No lobster."

Bonaventure sighed as he flipped the tape recorder back on. "You have connections, Ikari. And I'm going to uncover them. This whole thing involved more than just you, Fuyutsuki, and the NERV gang. You were involved, to be sure but… like I said, I can't help but think that you're a scapegoat in this. That very powerful people want you to keep quiet."

And suddenly, the floodgates opened. "I can give you a name." said Ikari. Bonaventure tried to hide his excitement. "If you want it. He means nothing to me, and I am certain he is long dead. I feel no attachment to this person, so I feel no guilt in revealing it." Ikari shifted on his bed. "That said, I will not reveal this information for free."

Bonaventure answered with no hesitation. "Name your price."

"A simple swap of information." He said. "By rights, it's something that should have already been given to me by my own lawyer. They change the subject, or try to convince me that information would be a distraction. Clearly, they are hiding something… And so, I am forced to barter for it. I want to know two things, and two things only."

"What?"

"Is my son alive, and where does he stand?" Bonaventure thought, for a second, that he saw the faintest hints of tears forming on the side of Ikari's chiselled face. They were gone in an instant, though, probably a delusion.

"Excuse me?"

"Is my son Shinji alive, and is he working against me? My lawyers will not tell me."

 _A weird request, but one I can work with. Still…_ "How do I know this name won't be meaningless? How do I know you're not trying to deliberately mislead me?"

"Because," Ikari said, "I am a man with little to lose. I said already, my fate is a foregone conclusion. This trial is a farce. So, although I will not admit to anything, I will tell you that you are correct in suspecting that there is a vast power edifice connected to the events of the past two decades that I am…" he chose his words carefully. "… _aware of._ I will gladly bring it down around me, but I would be a fool not to use the information that I have to advance my own position. By following this lead, you will uncover some of the story. Not all of the story, but enough to keep you interested. This, among other things, ensures that you keep me well protected. You wouldn't want your best lead to die _unexpectedly_ , would you? Like you said, the people _out there_ would gladly have me killed, simply based on..." he almost smiled again, " _groundless_ accusations."

 _It also gives certain vested interests a hell of a lot of motivation to take you out of the game, Ikari. People that wouldn't want you to ever take the stand. Better not tell you that, though. Maybe you just forgot._ Rene decided that, no, he hadn't forgotten. He was simply playing a longer con than he.

"Fine. Name first."

Gendo hesitated for a moment, and then finally said one word. "Kaji. That's all you get."

"No first name?"

"I did not say I was cheap. But I ensure you that the name I gave you is a good lead, a solid lead." He said. "You had better write it down."

Suddenly, the neckless guard cut in. "One minute, Mr. Bonaventure." _Shit._

"They will force you to leave soon. Please uphold your end of the bargain, or you can expect nothing more from me."

He had him there. "Fine. Shinji is alive." He said, trying to keep his expression as neutral as possible. _And batshit._

There was something like relief in Ikari's face then. Like he hadn't screwed up quite as badly as he thought he did. "And does he stand against me?" An odd question, for a father to ask about his son.

Bonaventure could do nothing but tell the truth. "I sure as hell hope so. As of now I can honestly tell you that I don't know."

Ikari nodded. Rene could see that Ikari was somewhat satisfied with that, if not entirely. "Mr. Bonaventure, if I may ask a personal favour before you leave…"

"What is it?"

"If you ever do see my son, please tell him that I am sorry. For everything I put him through." Ikari said. "He suffered greatly, and I am to blame for it." _Genuine emotion?_

"Fine." responded Rene, almost instantly. "I'll tell him."

Ikari seemed surprised. "Why? Frankly, I expected more bargaining."

"Because you owe the kid an apology. That's it."

He walked out of the cell and breathed a heavy sigh. He had been doing that a lot, lately. That had not gone as well as he had hoped. Still, he had a start at least.

He had another lead. It wasn't anything yet, just a seed. But, again, it was a start. Upon exiting the prison, Rene took out his phone and called the office. He got Aaron Rickover's answering machine, while smoking a cigarette. He sat on the hood of his car. "Aaron, it's me, Rene. I need you to get the team looking for the name Kaji. Anything connected with NERV or GEHIRN, or Ikari personally. I don't care how trivial it looks, I want to know about it."

He got in his rental car and started to drive back towards Denver, his thoughts troubled, his mind ill at ease. There was something more to this. Why _did_ Ikari's defense refuse to tell him if his son was alive? And why did Ikari allow Rene to interrogate him unaccompanied? It was strange, to say the least. Still, even without his lawyer, Ikari had held his own like a champ. Nothing outwardly incriminating, nothing he could hang him with. Still, he had given him something to chew on, and that justified the trip.

He wanted to strategize as he drove, to try to map out some new kind of strategy, or at least get something useful done. But his thoughts kept turning back to the strange man Rene had met in the airport. His memories were hazy, but his last promise stood out to Bonaventure: " _We'll meet again someday."_ There was something ominous about that. Whatever his intentions were, they weren't good.

" _We'll meet again someday."_

 _God forbid._

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

This chapter was a pain in the ass to write. Well, let's be honest. _Every_ chapter is kinda, at least by the end. But this one was especially. After a long struggle against file troubles and legions of extra commas it's finally ready to be uploaded. Thank God for that.

OCs are hard. Maybe that's because there's already kind of a strike against them right from the get-go. It's not really their fault, but hey, I can sympathize. You're not here for them, after all. All I can do is try to make them halfway compelling characters. I _did_ warn you right in chapter one, there _will_ be OCs. They aren't the stars of course, but I feel that they're important because they're the ones, ultimately, that flesh out the world. The Third Impact did not, after all, affect just those that were directly tied to NERV. There were millions of people out there, with lives torn apart and rearranged by a tragedy the magnitude of which we in this world cannot comprehend. There are potentially millions of stories out there, all of which would have The Impacts as the central axis in them. Luckily for you, I'm only picking and choosing a few to tell.

This was the Chapter, above all, that I wanted to get right. It sets up the main part of the story, that we're finally starting to move in to. After way more work than I thought there would be, we were finally able to get it to a point where the foundation was lain well enough for the whole thing not to collapse under its own weight. For that, I thank Glory-To-Our-August-King, or the wonderfully euphonious short form of that name Glor who did more editing than I think any person should be forced to endure. I deleted most of the commas you told me to but I had to save a few of my favorites. Sorry Glor, they had _families._

I also thank Word for kindly deleting most of the content edits I made the first time around, and for delaying this chapter by almost two weeks.

Until Next Time,

Folk Devil


	5. Chapter 5 - Diatheke

**CHAPTER 5: DIATHEKE**

" _And Cain said to the_ _Lord_ _, "My punishment_ _is_ _greater than I can bear! Surely You have driven me out this day from the face of the ground; I shall be hidden from Your face; I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, and it will happen_ _that_ _anyone who finds me will kill me.""_

 _-Genesis 4: 13-14_

 **SHINJI**

The phone rang again. They ignored it.

Shinji lay covered in sweat on the floor of their living room, next to the couch. He stared blankly at the ceiling, not quite unfamiliar, but still uncomforting. "They're never going to leave us alone." he said, finally. The words were the first ones spoken in almost a day. They had barely moved since receiving the news. The room was hot, far too hot for this time of year, especially since just days ago it was freezing.

"I know," replied Asuka, stirring next to him. Her voice was flat, expressing nothing besides defeated resignation. Her eyes seemed somewhat glazed over, blue eyes fixated at some indefinite object. She slumped over for a minute, as if she wanted to curl up again and go back to sleep. But then stood up, her legs shaky, as if she didn't quite remember how to. She flopped down on to the couch, her legs sprawling over the coffee table, which was festooned with various refuse left over from their latest attempt to hide from the world.

Shinji preferred to stay on the floor. "So what do we do?" he said, timidly, not really expecting an answer.

"I don't know…" she replied, trailing off oddly. There was something there, underneath it all. Some unexpressed idea. Shinji was fairly certain what she meant, but he didn't go digging. "We're junkies, you know. This is what junkies do."

Shinji sat up, his shoulders stiff. His neck was completely seized up. The damn thing wouldn't crack. The sunlight that had initially woke him up was poking through the curtains turning the room an odd shade of reddish gold. He glanced at the clock. It was past six in the evening, the sun was _setting,_ not rising as he had initially thought. "Where are your painkillers?" he asked.

"You're not supposed to take those."

"I need them."

"Bullshit you do." said Asuka, sounding more like a chiding mother than a concerned spouse. Eventually, though, she gave in. "In my bag. Front pocket."

"I can't find them." said Shinji, who had carefully moved the crumpled receipts and empty packages of gum that lined the inside of her travel bag.

"The other pocket. The one with the keys in them."

"Oh." He pulled out his prize, a small bottle of oxycodone. Unlike the vast majority of their prescription drug collection, the oxys were actually prescribed by a _real_ doctor. Asuka still had fairly debilitating physical pain from her battle with the MP Evas, which could only be managed with heavy painkillers. Shinji occasionally skimmed off the top, but only ever with her permission. He wasn't an _addict_ , after all. Asuka was just being overdramatic. "Thanks."

She frowned at him. "You get _one_ pill. I actually need to use that shit for legitimate reasons. Plus we've been asleep long enough."

"Well, my neck _does_ hurt." he said glibly, before swallowing the painkiller whole, without water.

"We slept on the floor, idiot. That's why it hurts." Another frown. "You know those are basically heroin, right?"

"Yeah…"

"Well, I don't want you getting hooked. No more after that."

"I don't even want any more after this." In truth, Shinji rarely used her painkillers. The numbness, warmth, and artificial euphoria of the opiate reminded him too much of the Entry Plug. Bringing back bad memories was counterproductive. But today he was on edge, and he needed something heavy to bring him down. _One pill won't hurt, right?_

In truth, he didn't particularly care if it did.

"Whatever." she said, her face clearly expressing a great deal of skepticism at his claim. "Look, I know you're going through hell right now, so I'm not going to be a bitch about it. Not today at least. Tomorrow might be a different story."

For some reason, Shinji could only laugh bitterly. " _I'm_ going through hell? Asuka, look at yourself." It was true. She had cried for countless hours in his arms. It took a toll that was easy to see. Her eyes were dark and bloodshot, and her hair, normally kept in pristine condition even in the darkest of her moods was messy and disheveled.

For his part, Shinji rarely cried anymore. He didn't deserve to.

Shinji expected some sort of chiding remark, instead she just said, "I've been going through hell for fifteen years." That killed him, it was rare for her to sound so resigned. Usually, when she was sad she was angry too. That at least, was normal.

But, suddenly, her tone changed. "I need to get out of here for a bit. Get some goddamn work done. I've been slacking off. I missed a class, not that the little bastards would be disappointed about it." The determination she expressed was obviously false, but what could he say to that? It was progress at least, if forced. At least she had the fortitude to get up and _try_ to do something. _What the hell do I have?_

Still, he would be remiss if he didn't express concern. "Are you sure?" he asked. She certainly didn't _look_ like someone that wanted to work. But Asuka had always been far more motivated than he was. She could escape into her work for a few hours, at least. Shinji didn't have that luxury. She actually had a talent. Shinji was an unemployed shut-in with less than a tenth-grade education. He had no real prospects for bettering himself except for a phantom autobiography which, even if he finished it, he had no intention to ever release.

 _Father would be so proud._

"I can't stay in this house any more, Shinji. We… we shouldn't have done what we just did. We should've just faced our problems. Not hide like frightened kids. We're getting too old for this shit." she didn't look exactly convinced by her own words. "I'm fine, really. I've had my freak out, I'm fine now. I'm more pissed off than anything. At myself, for wasting almost a week just… _moping_. I'm _fine_." She began heading for the shower. "Are you fine?"

"I don't know." He said. "I don't want to… I don't want to go through it all _again_. They're going to make us relive it all. And tell them about..." He felt his heartbeat quicken, a worrying sign. " _Everything."_

He could see her shudder at the word. _Everything_ was enough to bring the memories back, at least vaguely. They were hard to suppress, impossible to kill, and all too eager to manifest themselves. "Maybe they won't... maybe they just want stupid shit. Names and dates and stuff. Maybe it'll just be a pain in the ass. An annoying inconvenience. Not…" She stopped. Not _what?_ There were no words Asuka could find to express the hell that the Trial was almost certainly going to be for them.

Shinji just looked at her. That was enough to shoot the hope dead out of the air.

"Either way," she said, "we're going to have to move. To a more secure location, a better apartment. Maybe even hire some guards or something. If we're going to be witnesses we can't keep the fact we were Eva pilots a secret anymore. Our faces and names are going to be all over the news in a couple weeks."

Never in the five years since they had left Japan had they mentioned their time as pilots to anyone else. Discussing it amongst themselves was painful enough, but to talk to _others_ about it? Only those with a security clearance and a need to know were aware of their real identity. Hell, it was only recently had the news that _children,_ of all things, were used to pilot the bio-mechanical monstrosities that destroyed the world had been leaked, to considerable public anger. Most probably assumed they were dead. How could anyone survive _that?_ That was a fiction Shinji and Asuka were all too willing to maintain.

Even the therapist that Asuka briefly saw remained only vaguely aware of her situation, and completely ignorant of the most painful incidents in her life. No wonder he labelled her a "difficult patient". If only he knew the truth. Still, to hear Asuka tell it, the man was a prick. Completely condescending, even threatening vaguely to have her committed at one point. Asuka could tell quickly that there was no hope for progress there, no relief to be found, so she left more frustrated and jaded than ever.

And Shinji? Well, he never even went in the first place.

That was why they went to Doctor Bakassi. He didn't ask questions, he just wrote prescriptions. No wonder word on the street called him Doctor Xanax.

But still, it was a silence they could not break, a secret which they knew would eventually be revealed to the world. They were possibly the two most important individuals in human history, how could they keep it a secret any longer? Soon, the blanket of anonymity they had hid behind would be lifted, and they wouldn't have the luxury of hiding anymore.

Shinji wasn't thinking about that, though. "With what money?" asked Shinji. He, of course, knew the answer already. He waited for the inevitable response.

"How about the four and a half million dollars we have sitting in the bank, idiot?"

"No."

"What?"

"No, I said."

"What the hell are you on about?" she said, "we can't stay here!"

"We're not moving." he said, stubbornly. His voice seemed colder now, more authoritative. "Not with that money. Don't bring it up again."

She snorted. "Okay, _Commander Ikari_." she said. Shinji felt a wave of panic wash over himself at the not so thinly veiled reference to his father, followed closely by a flash of rage. But he bit his tongue. "Are you forgetting that half that money belongs to me? Or does the _man of the house_ handle the finances? Last I checked you're the one barefoot and in the kitchen. Hell, you don't even cook that often anymore."

He didn't budge. He felt something building inside him, something he had suppressed. "I'm not living in a house bought with… _blood money_." His voice stronger than it had been in days. "This place is fine."

She laughed bitterly. She was clearly angry now. "' _Blood money.'_ Christ you're dramatic sometimes. When the cultists and gawkers and media jackals want to _fucking_ crawl in through your bedroom window for a chat, have fun, because I'm taking my half and living somewhere far away from them. If you get sick of it maybe you can come for a visit. Bring an overnight bag. Who knows, maybe we can even have sex _for once_." She was yelling now. "I know it's hard for you to get off when I'm awake but you could _fucking try_ maybe _!_ " He cringed reflexively at the remark, which is exactly what she wanted.

She had been yelling loud enough, apparently, that their neighbor in the other half of the duplex heard. "Shut the fuck up! I'm trying to _sleep_! If you're gonna yell, yell in English or go back where you came from ya goddamn _boat babies_! I gotta work nights!" hollered an angry, gruff, and very Bostonian voice just beyond their shared wall. Then, for good measure, "Goddamn refugee bastards! Who the fuck let you out of the camps anyway?" They ignored it, too wrapped up in their own problems to care. They even ignored the string of loudly "whispered" racial slurs which could very clearly be heard through the rather thin wall separating their respective living quarters.

Too wrapped up in their own problems to care about him. "We're not using that money." he said, unbowed. His voice was strangely calm, scarily calm. His voice was icy, barely masking the rage below. "Don't bring it up again."

She stared him down, all sentiment gone. Her eyes shined with anger. "You're so cold sometimes." she said, "Just like your father."

 _My father…_

At that, something snapped in Shinji. He seized an empty coffee mug and threw it in her general direction, missing by a mile but managing to shatter it into a dozen pieces. Then, he lashed out at the cheap Swedish flat-pack kitchen table with his fist, causing the poorly attached white pine leg to snap off. The table collapsed in on itself. The remaining dirty dishes as well as an alarming number of pill bottles, empty and partially full, crashed to the floor. " _Enough!"_ he screamed. He was breathing heavily now. His lungs couldn't seem to get enough oxygen. Stars obscured his vision, and his palms trembled. His knuckle bled slightly from the impact.

Asuka said nothing for a while, she merely stared. Then, quietly, she squeaked out: "You're scaring me."

Shinji struggled to catch his breath. He was scared too. It had been a while since The Anger had come to him, since he had lashed out at her like that. Years.

 _I'm getting worse._

Already, his anger was replaced with regret and a gnawing, all-encompassing sense of self hatred and shame. "Are we seriously arguing about money? Now? Today of all _fucking_ days?" Shinji rarely swore in any language, but that was the least of his concerns now. He saw stars, his lungs couldn't get any oxygen. He felt like he was drowning. "Have we become that petty?" He collapsed onto his hands and knees, trying and failing to get his breath under control.

He really was an irredeemable piece of shit. _I deserve to die._

"Shinji…"

He couldn't bear to look at her. No use keeping up the fight, it was a lost battle. Principles? Who said he got to have principles? He lost the right to be a man of honour five years ago.

"St- start looking at real estate ads. Screw it. I don't care anymore." He still couldn't catch his breath. He tried for an uncomfortably long period of time, his lungs on fire, but he couldn't calm himself down. He gave up and curled up on the floor. "He's back, Asuka. My father is _back._ " His head collapsed into his hands, and he began to cry. He couldn't control himself anymore, the quiet depression and occasional panic he had been living with replaced with an absolute breakdown. His shaking was uncontrollable now.

Asuka's anger had evaporated. "I know." she said, walking back over to him. She knelt down next to him. She opened her mouth to say something else, but nothing came out. Instead, she embraced him.

"I'm sorry." said Shinji. "I'm so sorry." He was apologizing for much more than his outburst. He was apologizing for everything he had done to her. He was apologizing for the hospital room. He was apologizing for the Mass Production Units. He was apologizing for Third Impact and the beach.

He was apologizing for _being_ with her.

Her touch made him sick with guilt. _I've hurt her again. I don't deserve to be with her._ It was another sin in his already long tally.

Then, after a while, an hour perhaps, maybe less, she whispered, "That bitch thought I was going to kill myself."

"What?" He had finally calmed enough to stop shaking, lying in her undeserved embrace, trying desperately to make the thoughts _stop._

He felt her nod grimly. "The Fed. She said 'If you're going to try to hurt yourself again…' to me. Right after she told me about the subpoena." She glanced down at the scars on her wrists. "Are they that obvious?"

"I don't think so." he said, touching the scars absentmindedly. He tended to do that, as if to comfort her. They were the most visible sign of her pain, so he gravitated towards it, as if touching them would make her feel better. "They still make me sad every time I see them." _It's my fault they're there at all._

"I know they do." she said, stroking his hair almost maternally. He lay with his head on her chest, staring at the ceiling. Despite everything, he let himself enjoy her embrace, forcing the guilt down for just a moment. A brief reprieve, for her sake.

"Things were going so well. We were finally starting to get our lives together."

"Were we?" she asked rhetorically, cutting him off mid-sentence. "Or were we just pretending?"

They were silent for a while after that. But there was something heavy in the air, something that needed to be said. They both knew what it was.

Asuka hesitated for a moment, her eyes darting around nervously, as if she had done something wrong. "Shinji… do you… _want_ to go through it all? Do you want to keep doing this?"

"Doing what?" He knew exactly what she was talking about already, but he had to be sure.

She stared at him, the sort of stare that says more than words ever could. " _Everything."_ She took a deep breath. "There's always…"

She left the last words of that sentence unspoken.

 _There's always…_

 _The Pact._

* * *

 _Huddled in the corner_ _w_ _hat was once an industrial slaughterhouse, bone saws and gore sluices removed months ago by federal contractors, the smell of death covered nicely by the smell of desperation. Their bodies were covered in sweat, mud, and tears. Neither knew exactly what to do. Their movements were unsure and fumbling. Awkward._

 _Desperate._

 _Stifled cries of pleasure reduced to irrepressible cries of pain, emotional and physical. An act of union, witnessed by apathetic refugees and porcine ghosts._

 _They lay less than a foot away from a group of strangers, finally asleep now. Strangers that had tried, out of a begrudging sense of warped courtesy to ignore them. To ignore the sounds that only two kids experiencing not just love, but affection of any sort, for the first time could produce. Under ordinary circumstances both would be too shy by far to do this, but these were not ordinary circumstances. At least ten couples a night did it out in the open like this, reduced to the status of animals, rutting in an unwashed mass of humanity._

 _Thank God condoms were about the only thing readily available. The last thing the government wanted was more mouths to feed._

 _The aftermath; an unspoken vow finally spoken. Whispered through tears in hushed tones, too quiet for anyone else to hear. Almost too quiet to be real:_

" _If we die, Shinji, we die together."_

 _Covenant sealed; blood sacrifice staining MilSurp survival blanket._

* * *

He stared at her, thinking about his answer for far too long. _Did_ he want to go through it all? There _was_ an easy way out. They wouldn't be hurting anyone if they went together, there was no one left to hurt.

That was the whole point of the deal.

Then again, would killing himself, even with her, really solve anything? He chose to come back. He _chose_ to live. And even if he regretted his choice, he had an obligation to serve out his sentence until the pain became unbearable. His life was a punishment, and even if it was hard, it wasn't hard enough yet for Shinji to be able to justify an end to it.

Unless _she_ wanted to go. He would gladly follow her into death, and would welcome her permission. He had sinned against her most of all; only _she_ could grant him release.

Perhaps it was merely this sense of masochism that made him eventually say, "No. I can't. It hasn't come to that." He sighed. "Not yet, anyway. Unless you-" _Please._

But she cut him off abruptly. "No, the last thing I want to do is give that bitch the satisfaction. I was just gauging where you're at. I never really wanted to…" she couldn't say the word. Not after what she had been through. "I shouldn't have even brought it up, that was stupid of me. We'll just have to face this shit, okay? It's going to suck, but we'll face it. Together." _No reprieve yet._ She kissed him softly. "We're strong, Shinji. Stronger than these bastards. I know it hurts, but… the hard part's over, right? It's just a trial. Just some bad memories and unwanted attention. We've still got our best years ahead of us. Right?"

Shinji could tell that even she knew she was bullshitting, but he let the lie stand for her sake.

"We shouldn't talk like this." he said, at last, his breath finally even, his heart rate finally steady-ish. "I thought you said you were fine." That seemed like an eternity ago.

Really, it was.

"I am." she lied. Her voice was filled with false energy again, the fight and its aftermath forgotten. She was a damn good actor, he'd give her that. "And now, I'm going to take a shower so I can get some work done. Just a bit. I'll be back in a few hours. Probably before midnight."

With that, she got up and left the room, leaving Shinji alone to his own thoughts. He struggled up and stood by the kitchen counter, which was directly adjacent to the living room. He was exhausted, but he couldn't justify going back to sleep. Instead, he stared out the small kitchen window at the street outside, watching the cars pass on the road outside as the sun finally disappeared entirely behind the row of townhouses across the street.

Faintly, he could hear her sobbing in the shower.

* * *

Shinji's feet sank into the rain-laden mud that covered the former farmer's field twenty miles south of Spirit Lake, Idaho, where the JRRI camp had been set up some years ago. He was somewhere in the middle of the mess line, trying in vain to shut out the damp cold that drilled into his bones. It had been raining heavily for a week, non-stop, absolutely soaking everything in the camp.

His feet, covered only with cheap donated sneakers from some church group in Des Moines were soaked all the way through. In any other circumstance, they would be considered ruined, but Shinji knew he would have to make do. Shoes weren't necessarily hard to come by these days, but there was still a byzantine bureaucracy to cut through in order for an ordinary camp inmate to secure a new pair. Why? He wasn't sure. Maybe it was some petty act of punishment by a population that didn't necessarily want them here in the first place.

 _Shinji_ deserved to be punished. The others didn't. They didn't do this, he did.

" _Don't bunch up!"_ yelled the Red Cross worker at the head of the line in thick, heavily accented Japanese. His voice was quiet against the driving rain, despite the fact that he was using a microphone. He wore a white rain poncho emblazoned with a Red Cross to shield him from the cold rain which came down in big sheets, soaking everyone to the bone.

Clearly, he was as miserable as everyone else.

" _You'll get your rice faster if you proceed in order. Have your card and PIN number ready so we can get you through quicker."_ Shinji shut his eyes to try to keep the stinging rain out. The rain, all too common to the Pacific North West still had a high LCL content even this Far East.

 _So this is what seasons feel like._

Shinji noticed ruefully that there was a sort of pinkish tinge to the rain, from the LCL blowing off the Pacific. These heavy rain days always reminded Shinji of what had happened, try as he might to forget about it. Everyone else had gotten used to it, but Shinji hadn't. He couldn't.

He was the reason for it being there in the first place.

He shut the thought out and stared at his feet. The man kept speaking. _"Remember, you cannot collect food for another camp resident unless they are under seven years of age and a dependant. If you have a dependant registered to you, it will be marked in the account registered to your ID card. I repeat, you cannot collect food for another camp resident unless…"_ they always repeated announcements like this several times, attempting to drill it into the heads of the tired and hungry masses of the camp like they were dogs in obedience school or something.

Shinji shuffled his feet uncomfortably as the line moved up, his feet made a horrible squelching noise as it tried to suck him in. The Earth was trying to reclaim him, maybe. His mind wandered, as it often did, to dark places.

There were certainly areas in the camp where the mud was deep enough to sink into, mud puddles and sinkholes six feet deep or deeper. They were hazards and had drowned more than one curious child or drunk adult. At this point, Shinji wouldn't mind jumping into one himself.

He would sink down rather quickly, after all. And even better, once he jumped in he'd be unable to escape. Unable to wuss out in his final act of cowardice. Swallowed up by the earth, he would drown in filth. _A fitting end._ The best part was his body would probably never be found. Not quickly, at least.

He shut that line of thought out abruptly as well. It was difficult; suicides were one of the few constants in the camp, the electrified fence claiming more than one victim. Every few days or so Shinji would hear about somebody taking one final run at it. But the last thing he needed was a panic attack now, in the middle of the food line. It would be embarrassing of course, but even worse, he wouldn't get fed. It had happened to him before. In the first weeks of his residency at the camp, he would black out multiple times a day. Now, he had the attacks mostly under control not out of some sort of newly found mental wellbeing but out of simple indifference. There was less to panic about because he simply _cared_ less about what happened to him.

Still, they were a frequent enough occurrence that the guards didn't bother to take him to the infirmary anymore. It was par for the course. They didn't look at him like some poor kid, scarred by a traumatic experience (that was, for him, far more traumatic and personal than they would ever know,) anymore. Instead, he was just another annoyance to them. He had been in the camp longer than almost all of the other inmates, in the first cohort of Japanese refugees. He was familiar, and therefore contemptible. Shinji suspected that many of the soldiers and warders thought he was faking it.

"Hey, kid." said a gravelly voice behind him, snapping his line of thought. "Got any smokes?"

Shinji ignored him. He rarely spoke these days. Better to keep his mouth shut. The voice was unfamiliar. He was probably new to the camp. Cocky. Hot-headed.

Dangerous.

"Hey, kid! I'm talking to you!" he grabbed hold of his shoulder, squeezing it in a death-grip. He was big, almost six-feet tall and muscular. His face was covered in pock marks, and his jet-black hair was long and greasy. He spoke in a heavy Osakan accent, reminding Shinji, sadly, of someone else he knew once.

The camps were full of people like this. Even for those that were normal and law abiding in their previous lives, camp life, rife with tedium and a lack of any particular purpose led many previously driven and upstanding citizens to revert to a life of violence or hedonism.

The man, who had apparently chosen the first option, had just arrived a few weeks ago, on a shipment packed with dissidents and trouble makers from the Oakland holding facility. Shinji had never spoken to the man before, but he already was wary of him.

The man shook him roughly, "I saw you trading down by the baseball diamond. I know you're holding out on me, fucker."

"No s-sir." Shinji squeaked out. "I don't have any. I'm sorry." Conflict was never Shinji's strong suit, but ever since Third Impact he had been utterly hopeless at even the most benign of interactions. This was certainly _not_ a benign interaction. Already, he felt on the edge of tears. He was starting to breathe heavily. He tried, desperately, to calm himself, but he couldn't.

"You had a whole pack! Give me your goddamn cigarettes." He pulled his coat aside, revealing a shiv. "You ever been cut before kid?" he asked, his weathered face contorting into a sickeningly sweet smile, his teeth rotten. He had the skin of an old man but the body of a young man, a visage weathered by years of self-abuse. "Last chance."

"I don't… I don't even sm—"

"You were trading them. So you must have some. Now you're gonna give 'em to me. I killed a man in the Oakland Freedomtown you know. The guards knew, they didn't give a shit." He grabbed Shinji roughly by the scruff of his shirt, tearing it. "Think they'll give a shit now?"

All at once, preservation overwhelmed depression and Shinji was paralyzed by fear. He felt his chest tighten. The man was partially right; he _had_ been trading cigarettes down by the baseball diamond. He horded them for weeks to buy Asuka the painkillers she needed for the sympathetic pain that still shot through her a full year after her battle with the Mass Production Evas. They were what let her sleep at night, what let her function. There was no other way for her to get them. The camp's medical facilities were basic, to say the least, and they didn't cover phantom pain. _"Those scars are clearly from childhood, look how healed they are!"_ they said to her. _"You're just on a fishing expedition."_

Shinji suspected that the thug would rather have the bottle of generic Oxycontin he had hidden in his pocket than some cigarettes, but he kept his mouth shut. He couldn't have _those._ If he had any cigarettes left, he would gladly hand them over. But he couldn't shake out of the lie, not now, not after he had committed. "I c-can't, I don't have any!" he said, "please, just leave me alone. If I get any I'll give them to you."

"Leave you alone? Do you _fucking know who I am?_ " he said, "I'm Kentaro Noshiro. I ran with Yakuza, boy. You _will_ give me what I want!"

"I don't have any cigarettes! I don't even smoke!"

"Don't you fucking sass me!" the man backhanded Shinji, sending him sprawling into the mud. The man raised his hand to hit him again, but was stopped mid-windup. An older man, gray, slightly hobbled by years of neglect, had grabbed his fist. He had a far stronger grip than it seemed, and the younger man was actually having a hard time breaking out of it.

"Leave him. The boy's protected."

"What?" he asked, enraged. "What the fuck do you mean _protected?!"_

"The boy. He's from Tokyo-3."

"What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

An American soldier, young, tall, and wearing dark mirrored aviator shades despite the rain strode over after finally noticing the commotion. His nametag read "GONZALEZ." He wore full battle dress, complete with flak jacket, camo helmet, M16, and three extra magazines of ammunition. The US did not take chances with their captive population. He clutched his rifle, which was strung around his shoulders by a strap, lazily.

The soldier spoke in short, annoyed sounding sentences. From what Shinji could guess, he was probably attempting to understand the situation. Shinji understood none of it, except "…okay here?" The soldier seemed more bored than angry. After all, he had probably broken up thousands of lunch line fights in his time being posted to the camp.

It was routine.

"Yes, yes." said the older man, in English. He bowed slightly. "Good. Good. Yes."

The American soldier said a few more sentences. Shinji couldn't understand what he was saying, except for "no fighting." He sounded suspicious, as if he knew something else was going on. Still, apparently sufficiently satisfied with the response, he strode back to the line of soldiers which stood several feet away, watching the food-line for any potential Conduct Code breaches.

"Fucking Americans." muttered Noshiro, after he spit into the mud. Americans, especially the soldiers, were hated by a large segment of the camp. At one time, Shinji would have probably numbered among those that resented the guards, but by now, he simply did not care. He was past hating anything but himself.

Noshiro turned back to the older man. "What the hell is going on? Why can't I hit this kid?"

The old man turned back to the younger thug. "Asagiri doesn't want any Tokyo-3 refugees shaken down. Thinks they're sacred or something."

The greasy looking thug shrugged off the hand of the old man and shot daggers at him. Shinji merely stood silently, praying that he wouldn't be struck. "What? Who the fuck is Asagiri and why the hell should I care?"

"Jesus, you're _brand_ fucking new aren't you? Asagiri runs the camp. _Real_ Yakuza. Not your wannabe gangster bullshit. Anything that gets in to the camp gets in through him. Very powerful man."

He looked at the boy and sniffed, rain water dripping off his pointed nose in rivulets, small gobbets of snot, unnoticed by any but Shinji, starting to trickle out. Clearly humbled, he ignored the slight by the old man. "What the fuck do you mean by _sacred?"_

"You didn't have Shin Seiki in Oakland?" he asked. The cultists were low in numbers in the camp but high in influence. They treated Shinji and Asuka with an air of undeserved respect merely due to the fact that they had _lived_ in Tokyo-3.

If only they knew the truth.

He sniffed again. "The religious weirdos were mostly Tenshido down in Cali. Never believed in any of that shit myself. Don't know too much about it either. I don't talk to freaks."

"Well, all you need to know is Asagiri's right into that cult shit. Said the New God gives him good luck, keeps the _Yankis_ stupid or something. Makes his shipments come in unsearched. He says the God wants him to protect anybody from "the Holy City." That means you don't fuck with no Tokyo-3 people unless you want to have an accident. That means this kid and the _hafu_ girl are off limits."

" _Hafu_ girl? He's protecting a _hafu girl?!_ " he looked at the old man incredulously, as if he had been slapped. He spit into the mud. "It's like this Asagiri fuck forgot what these _Yanki_ bastards are doing to us. In Oakland we ate _hafus_ alive." He smiled lecherously. "Especially the girls, if you know what I mean." The loathsome bastard seemed to lick his lips slightly. Shinji shuddered.

"Well you don't touch _that hafu._ Unless you want to wake up with your throat cut open one morning." he said, sternly. "Forget the cigarettes, boy. You can't light them in this weather anyway."

Noshiro growled and turned back to Shinji. He spit again, getting a little phlegm on Shinji's shoe. "You'd better hope this Asagiri prick is as tough as this old bastard says he is. Cause the minute he's gone, _you're_ gone. Maybe then I'll pay your _hafu_ girlfriend a visit. You just made a fuckin' enemy, kid. A bad one." the man stopped talking and turned back towards the front of the line, muttering the whole way.

Shinji said nothing. His heart was still pumping wildly. Only the cold from the rain kept him conscious. They had moved up several feet throughout the argument, unconsciously moving forward with the crowd despite the intensity of their exchange.

Such was the power of an empty stomach.

When he reached the top of the platform where the food was being distributed, he swiped his card against the barcode reader. There was a little LCD sign that said: "ALLOCATED MEALS: 2," which Shinji knew through memory (not a genuine ability to read in English) meant he had two meals left.

He walked up to the little pot of vegetables, meat, and rice which was mercifully under an awning. Shinji held out two fingers.

"Need two. Need two!" He said.

"No, you get one!" said the cook, in slow, heavily simplified English. "One!" The cook, like all orderlies at the camp was an OBB contractor, as evidenced by the orange, white, and blue gazelle's head logo emblazoned on his right chest. The only ones hated more than the soldiers were the contractors, especially the guards.

"B..but…"

" _Back of the line_!" said the cook, pointing angrily with a ladle. They were sending him back.

"Two on…" he searched for the word. _Screen._ Yes. "Screen. You give?"

The cook gave up, apparently, and gestured angrily at the Red Cross guy. He said something in rapid fire English to the aide. "What seems to be the problem here?" asked the worker, in Japanese.

"It said that I have two meals left on the screen. They're only giving me one!"

"Do you have a dependant registered?" he said, frowning. "You're pretty young to have a kid."

"No, but my…" pause. " _Friend_ is sick. She can't come to pick it up herself."

"Is she registered as ill?" he asked, sceptically, drumming his fingers on the stainless steel countertop. "Cause you gotta get that registered too."

"No."

"Then we can't help you. Take your meal and share it with her if you want, otherwise she'll have to get back here before we close."

He wanted to protest, but he thought better of it. Wordlessly, Shinji accepted his portion and walked off of the platform towards the large former slaughterhouse that housed the living quarters. The fact that they lived in a pig farm was an uncomfortable reality that was ignored by a large segment of the camp. The slightly red tinge to the concrete floor was explained away by a bad paintjob. Still, it was better than the alternative. Shinji and Asuka had been in the camp almost since it was opened, so they remembered the days of the army tents. Those, it turned out, were _impractical_ for a place as rainy as this, to say the least.

Also, they were _expensive_.

Asuka lay in the corner of the slaughterhouse on their mat, motionless. She had been that way all day, unwilling to speak to him. She looked radiant, even under the fluorescent light. Her good eye stared at nothing, as if she was caught in a daze. Suddenly, it snapped to him, but she remained silent.

"They wouldn't give me two meals. Take mine." he said, eyes on the ground, unable to look at her. "It's uh… some kind of stir fry. I think they tried for donburi but it's not really anything."

"Pills." she said brusquely, turning away from him.

"Is your bad eye still hurting?" he said handing her the tiny bottle of smuggled painkillers.

"Yeah. Itching too." She said, rubbing at her eye-patch before popping two pills and lying on her stomach.

"I almost got in a fight for those, you know." He said, deciding not to go into more detail.

Asuka only grunted at that. "I'm going to sleep." she said.

Shinji put a hand on her back. "You didn't even finish your food."

She flinched away from him. " _Don't touch me_." she said, recoiling, before burying herself back in her cocoon. "You eat it, it's yours anyway."

Shinji squatted down next to her. "Is this about last night? You've been just lying there all day, clearly you're upset. I thought you wanted…"

She bolted upright. " _Nothing happened last night."_ she said, louder than she intended to. "I was just… we were just…" she buried her face in the rolled up hoodie she used as a pillow. "We were just _confused_."

"Confused?"

She looked away from him. "It's never happening again, okay?" She said. "It was a one-time thing. You finally got in my pants. Congratulations."

"I… I'm sorry."

"Why the hell are you sorry?" she said. "I wanted it. God knows why, but I did. You weren't taking advantage of me or anything. You'd _never_ do that, right?" her words dug into Shinji like a knife. During the entire sexual act and the lead up to it, the sexual assault that he had committed against Asuka before Third Impact was an ugly subtext, an unspoken caveat to any kind of relationship. It hung about them like a vengeful spirit even before. Now, it was all the more relevant.

She let that sink in for a moment, before saying, " _This_ is what I'm upset about. I got your mail while you were in the food line, asshole." she retrieved a crumpled up piece of paper from beneath her survival blanket and threw it at him.

He examined it, and knew immediately what it was. The letterhead read: _INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT, NERV PROSECUTION UNIT "_ Y… you opened my mail?"

"Well _apparently_ we're a couple now so I figured I had the right." she said. "You _rejected_ their offer? What the hell, Shinji?" She cast her blankets aside and sprang to her feet.

He could think of nothing clever to say, so he just said the obvious. "I… I don't want to testify."

She was not impressed. "They were going to let us out of here! They were going to give you citizenship!" she was yelling now. A family nearby, huddled around a tiny portable TV side-eyed them, then went back to their program.

"But… I can't. Not if it means testifying." said Shinji. "You know why. You turned them down too!"

She stared him down, hands on hips. "You don't want to do it because you'll have to admit to all the shit you did. _I_ don't want to do it because I can't be bothered." she said. "You just don't want to take responsibility for wrecking the world. Now I'm stuck in this hellhole."

 _Don't want to take responsibility._ That summed it all up perfectly. The guilt was hard enough to deal with when it was private. If it were brought out for all to see… Shinji shuddered internally.

He felt tears spring to his eyes. He tried to fight them down, tried to preserve some semblance of his dignity. But it was in vain. He felt like a child. His voice dropped, and suddenly sounded very cold. "You don't have to stay here." he said. "You're an American citiz-"

" _Not so loud!"_ she hissed.

"Well, what the hell else am I supposed to say?!" he was yelling now too. "Why the hell are you staying here? Why are you torturing yourself? I'm the one that deserves to be tortured, _not you_!"

"Well, maybe I _will_ go." Any pretense of staying quiet was gone now. "I still have family in Tennessee, and that means an easy EastPass. I could be out of here by tomorrow morning." she smiled cruelly, before adding. "You'll die here without me."

She was right, but he didn't let her have that. "Then go." he said, pointing towards the door. _Please don't go._ "I'm sick of this. I'm sick of all of this. After last night I thought… I thought you were…"

"In love with you? Don't make me laugh."

That hurt him. He seethed with malignant rage. His fists curled up into tight little balls, he could feel his fingernails digging into his palms. "But you said…" he exhaled. "Fuck you, Asuka." _I'm sorry, please, stay._

She _did_ laugh then. There was no mirth in it. "You look angry. Are you going to try to _strangle_ me again, Shinji? Go all Ted Bundy on me like you do every time I hurt your _feelings_? Well, you missed your chance on the beach. I won't go so easy this time." she flipped her hair out of her face. "You have a real problem with women, you know that? I saw your thoughts in… _there_ , wherever the hell we were. They scared the hell out of me."

The rage was replaced by disgust. Disgust because she was right. "Just… leave me alone." _No, please._

"Oh, I will, Shinji. _Forever._ Get the hell out of here. I need to pack." she sniffed. "I can't believe I lost my virginity to _you_ of all people. I want to puke. You're more pathetic now than you ever were."

"Please… I'm sorry."

"Shinji," she said. "Just go. You're cancerous. I've stayed with you, despite _everything_ you've done to me, for more than a year now. You said I'm just like you in _there,_ well, that's not true. I'm _trying_ to move on, you're regressing. All you'll do is drag me back to where I was all those months ago. You can't change, you won't change, you won't even _try_ to change." her tone softened. "Look, it's not like I even hate you. I just… you deserve to be happy, probably. But I don't think you _can_ be happy. This was the last straw. I need to look out for myself." she looked almost sad. "And as for what I said last night, don't put too much stock into it. I was just emotional."

Shinji felt tears sting his eyes as he stumbled out of the sheet-metal building. No one stopped to stare, everyone else was wrapped up in their own problems. Kids nearby played soccer in a muddy field, a dirty stray dog chasing the ball as they kicked it. A junkie lay passed out, face down in the mud high on homebrewed opiates as OBB contractors looked on in apathy. Crooked farmers shilled for cheap labour from the backs of broken down pickup trucks.

He eventually lay down in the middle of an empty field, curled up in a fetal position, waiting for the tremors shooting through his body to stop. He cried openly, not caring who saw.

 _If we die, we die together._

 _What a joke._

The rain had stopped some time ago, but Shinji still felt cold.

* * *

"Hello, Mr. Ikari. This is Catherine Aylwin from the ICC. We've been trying to get in contact with you for some time now. Is everything okay?" The voice on the other end of the line was tentative, as if she was afraid of setting him off.

"Y-yes." said Shinji, "But… it's _Soryu_ now. I'm married." Shinji stood at the kitchen counter watching out the window. He held the phone tentatively, as if it were a bomb ready to explode. This was the call that he had been dreading for weeks, the call that he had been avoiding.

He was just glad it was _he_ that was taking it, not Asuka. God knows how that would have went.

"My apologies, Mr. Soryu. You're so young, it's hard for me to…" she dropped the line of thought. "Mr. Bonaventure is very eager to meet you, as you are probably well aware. He'll be flying up to Boston shortly, he's just finalizing some things on our end. Your English is _excellent_ , by the way."

"Uh… thanks. I'm not so sure what sort of help we can give. To tell you the truth we don't particularly want to get involved." _Hell of an understatement._

She laughed. "I've dealt with gangsters that are easier to flip than you, honey. It's okay, I understand. They don't tell me a lot of the details, lots classified you know, but I _do_ know you've been through a lot. Our goal was to make this as stress free as possible, and so far we haven't done a very good job. Especially considering the fact that the FBI, well… they screwed up, to be frank. We should have taken a softer touch or delivered the summons ourselves."

"Oh… well, _still_." He said, unsure of how to proceed. He wanted to tell her off, but he didn't have the guts.

"We've set up some offices downtown right off Causeway Street, right across from the arena. Are you familiar with the neighbourhood?" she gave him an address, which he promptly wrote down. "It's on the fourth floor, right next to the dentist's office. Are you okay to meet on Tuesday? I know it's on short notice, but we're on a tight schedule."

"Uh, I think Asuka works on Tuesdays. Is Monday better?"

"Monday's a holiday this year, 'cause the 13th is on a Sunday. How about Wednesday?"

"Fine."

"Alright, Wednesday at eleven? Great." She said, typing something into a spreadsheet. "Rene is a bit of an… odd person, maybe a bit standoffish, but deep down he's very nice. You might like him. You might not. Either way he's the best in the world at what he does, and he knows how to treat witnesses right." she said, as if that was supposed to reassure him.

"Uh…" _Standoffish_? He wasn't quite sure what the word meant in this context. Shinji wasn't sure that he could handle _standoffish_ right now. The thought gave him no comfort. "As… as long as we can get this over with quickly."

"The first meeting's strictly to get to know you. No questions about NERV, yet. It's strictly to make _you_ comfortable." she stopped typing. "Anyway, I'm sure you're busy, so I'll let you go. We'll see you on Wednesday. Have a nice day.

"T…Thanks." He wasn't quite sure what he was thanking her for.

"Don't mention it. And uh… Shinji? Take care of yourself." she said.

Shinji hung up without responding.


	6. Chapter 6 - Calisse

Chapter 6(1): _Câlisse_ (Part 1)

" _Is it not excessively strange that God should deny to the human beings whom he had fashioned the power to distinguish between good and evil? What could be more foolish than a being unable to distinguish good from bad? For it is evident that he would not avoid the latter, I mean things evil, nor would he strive after the former, I mean things good. In short, God refused to let man taste of wisdom, than which there could be nothing of more value for man. For that the power to distinguish between good and less good is the property of wisdom evident surely even to the witless; so that the Serpent was a benefactor rather than a destroyer of the human race."_

-Julian the Apostate, Against the Galileans

 **JUST OUTSIDE OF ROUYN-NORANDA, QUEBEC, OCTOBER 1965**

" _Enweille."_ Hissed his father, suddenly stopping, his feet squelching in the thick mud as he beckoned Rene to the fallen spruce trunk that he crouched behind. He had been lagging behind all day, the water in his boots giving him a mild case of trench foot.

When he finally arrived, his father pointed out into the swamp ahead of them with the same rough, dirty hand he held his beer with. "Look."

The moose stood about thirty feet away, across the muskeg. He was eating a patch of lichen passively, almost elegantly, brushing the light dusting of snow that covered it aside with his lips. He was massive, at least the height of a man, and twice as long. His antlers were ragged and his fur was shaggy, but he was beautiful all the same, in a savage sort of way.

It was the first animal of that size Rene had ever seen up close. It captivated him. The grace of his movements, the dark colour of his coat, and his sheer _size_ fascinated Rene, but at the same time it intimidated him.

Steam rose from its muzzle and mingled with the mist rising from the swamp, which shimmered in the early morning light. Small piles of snow were scattered in the shady areas of the swamp, the remnants of the first snowfall of the year which had occurred three days previous. The snow had been the justification for their hunting trip in the first place. "Snow's flying already," his father had said upon seeing the first flakes. "Better take Rene hunting, before the rutt's done. Gotta' get the sausages made before she's too cold, you know."

Rene's knees were soaked and he was freezing, but he didn't care right now. "It's—"

His father cut him off: "Shhh! You'll scare it," he said, slurring slightly. Rene had learned from an early age that hunting, much like driving, was a task best done drunk. Even so, his father carefully unslung his rifle, a pristine, well-oiled Lee Enfield, and handed it to Rene. "You know how to use this?"

Rene did, sort of. His father had taken him shooting before: beer cans and boxes for targets and the like, but only under his close supervision. Rene was under the impression that this policy existed as much for the rifle's safety as his own. For him to just _hand_ it to him…

Rene had a rifle of his own. A crappy mail order pellet gun held together with electrical tape, which required ten pumps to fire with any force at all. He had brought it along with him, slung on his shoulder from one of his father's old belts, in order to kill roughed grouse, but there were none that he had seen so far. No matter, even if he saw one, the sights were so bad on it that Rene had next to no chance of ever hitting anything.

He set aside his own poor excuse for a weapon and accepted the Enfield, with tentative, almost reverent hands. He tried to stop them from shaking, but it was a losing battle. It was far heavier than he remembered. He had handled it before, but only with his father behind him to take the force of the kickback. This time, there would be no such support.

"Are you sure?" he asked, in a squeaky, nervous voice.

"I'm sure. You should shoot this one. Unless…"

"No, I… I want to shoot it." A mask of determination hid his nervousness, barely. "I _want_ to." He said, as if to convince himself.

"Breathe slow. Aim for the heart, right behind the forelegs. When you're ready, _squeeze_ , don't pull."

Rene rested the rifle against the log, and squeezed one of his eyes shut, zeroing in on the target. The moose's head was down, his flank well exposed. He had a clear shot. He was _ready_.

And yet… he couldn't do it. He adjusted himself, stalling for time, and steadied his aim again, to make sure his shot was absolutely perfect. Never before had he felt this sort of awful power. The power to take something this _big's_ life away. It terrified him. A wave of panic washed over him. He wanted the pride that went along with killing the animal, of course. But he _didn't want to kill it._

Sensing hesitation, his father spoke. " _Déguédine!_ "

Rene jumped at his father's word. Panicking, he yanked on the trigger, jolting his aim slightly up and to the right. A shot rang out and he felt a sharp pain in his shoulder from the kickback of the rifle, which bruised him. The moose stopped, shuddered and _screamed_ , an unearthly bellow unlike anything Rene had heard before. It sounded like what Rene imagined the demons he had heard about in church sounded like. Breathless, panicked, and _in pain_.

Blood was everywhere, staining the small piles of white snow red in little spray patterns and mixing with the thick mud to make an unholy slop. The moose charged away from them, thank God, and slammed right into a tree, too pain-maddened to care as it broke one of its massive antlers in a sickening _snap_ , which echoed through the forest as loud as the gunshot had. Its moans grew more pathetic, less bellow and more mewl, almost like a child.

Eventually, it lost enough blood that its movements slowed and it collapsed to the ground with one last pitiful dying moan, a terminal shudder running down the length of its spine.

Then, all was silent except the beating of Rene's heart.

"Not bad," said his father, at last. "Got him in the lung. Not the cleanest kill I've ever seen but pretty good for your first time. Good job. Shame about the rack though."

Rene said nothing. His eyes were wide as saucers, his hands were shaking wildly. He felt liable to burst into tears or vomit, but he didn't. Instead, he just stood there, motionless.

"Did it feel good?" he asked, placing a hand on his shoulder. Rene had never even noticed that his father had reclaimed his rifle.

"N…no," he said, at last.

"Good," said his Father. "If it does… that's a problem." He took a long swig of his beer, finishing it, before casting it aside into the bushes. "You know, that gun, I killed men with. _Boys_ with. In the war. Imagine how that felt." He grabbed another bottle out of his tote bag, prying the cap off with his cigarette lighter. He handed the beer to Rene. For himself, he grabbed a hipflask of something significantly stronger. "You need this. Don't tell your mother."

Rene took a drink, forcing the bitter liquid down. _Mother._ He still felt the bruises from two nights ago. Still felt her words. He shuddered, and took another drink. It didn't taste as bad the second time.

"You're thinking about her, eh? What she does to you? She's a good woman, your mother. You might not know it, but she is. She… went through some things. When she was little, you know. You have to be strong for her. Even when she's not strong for you."

"What kind of things?"

His father took another drink. " _Osti de tabarnak."_ He swore, reflexively. " _Things._ Things you're too young to know about. Things that make what she does to you look like nothing. She's trying, your mother. Praying, trying to find God, trying to give you an education… she's _trying_. It's just… it's just hard for her. But she loves you." He said. "We all bear our scars, Rene. Some are worse than others. Me, I saw the war. Saw friends die. Killed people. She… well… she went through something much worse." He took a long drink from his flask. He began to walk towards the carcass as he unsheathed his long, rusty hunting knife. "Let's cut this thing up before it goes bad."

* * *

Consciousness came on slowly. Rene let himself drift for awhile, his head resting on the uncomfortable faux-cherry desk; half ten year old boy half sixty-six year old man, while the words of a demagogue filtered through barely noticed.

 _"...What is wrong with this nation? What sort of cancer is killing it, when a man can't walk from Kansas City Kansas to Kansas City Missouri without government papers? When a Japanese "refugee" has more rights than a man born and raised in Montana or Texas, or Iowa? When the government can't afford to rebuild California or Oregon, or God help them, Nevada, but they can afford to import millions of upper-class, economic immigrants from Japan? When you take millions of people from a rich country, a country that had the means to support themselves, a country that squandered those means on war, and expect us to shoulder the burden of feeding them. Of taking care of them. A country that used its vast industrial and scientific prowess not to defend mankind, as they promised, but to try to destroy it! But rather than get our just revenge, rather than punish them, we accepted them into our nation! We coddle them! We take the punishment for_ _ **their**_ _sins! On this day, we need to say with one loud, clear voice: no more!"_ The TV he kept in the corner of his office for white noise was on just loud enough for Rene to hear, but the words didn't register in his sleep-addled state.

"Rene!"

"Jesus!" he exclaimed, jolting up in his desk.

"You usually sleep in here?" said Ali Al Basra, the second highest ranking prosecutor in the United Nations NERV taskforce, below only Rene himself, at least technically. In practice, it was Ali that spearheaded the vast majority of the NERV prosecutions, with Rene focusing exclusively on Ikari.

"What time is it?"

"6:30. The meeting's in a half hour. And don't you dare complain, _you_ scheduled it. I flew back from Ottawa for this shit. _Redeye_." He said, flashing a roguish smile. His teeth were bone white, a stunning contrast to Rene's dull yellow, tinted by half a decade of smoking and marred by dozens of gunmetal grey fillings installed in an era long before fluoridated water had reached Northern Quebec. Al Basra was young, slightly heavy set from overwork, and quite short and stocky, perpetual stubble covering his olive skin. His suits were always pristine, a testament to the fact that he was far, far richer than Rene despite the fact that Rene outranked him.

Rene sighed as he rubbed his bloodshot eyes. "Goddamn it, I must've slept the night here." He shifted awkwardly in his chair, trying in vain to relieve the god-awful ache in his back. "Trying to get some work done, you know."

"Just get the drones to do it." _Drones_ was the term used in the office for low-level associate lawyers, translators, and interns. They were faceless and powerless, there to preform whatever menial tasks assigned to them.

"No. I was doing some, uh… research."

"Research?"

"I'm meeting with the Ikari kid tomorrow. Just some background stuff. It's a delicate operation." Lied Rene. He glanced at the screen and made sure that the window he had had open earlier was closed. In truth, he had been chasing that mysterious name: _Kaji._ He had plowed through NERV employment records, tax receipts, after action reports: everything he could. The name had come up only in obviously trivial situations. Part of the problem was that he had access to very little of the information. Things filed with the UN, which had an English copy, or the few crucial internal documents that had already been translated. Nothing seemed to point him in the right direction.

In truth, Ali had a point about the drones. There were almost a hundred translators on staff, and having even one of them would make the operation go much smoother. Unfortunately, all of the translators belonged to Ali. In a normal workplace situation, this would not be a problem. But Ali and Rene's relationship was… _strained_ as of late.

Well, that might be putting it mildly. Rene hated the conniving little bastard. To make matters worse, Rene's own conniving little bastard, Aaron Rickover (who was loyal- _ish_ ) had similarly turned up nothing. In any case, personal feelings aside, Rene still thought it prudent to keep Kaji to himself for the time being.

"We have a whole research department for that," said Al Basra, suspiciously. "You're the boss, why the hell are you wasting your time on busy work? Go home once and a while, for God's sake"

"I know, it's just… sensitive information at this point. I don't know if I can trust them." _Or you._ "And besides, I'm a control freak. You know me."

"Whatever, man. You're the veteran, I'm not going to question your methods. You were talking in your sleep, by the way. Bad dream?"

"More like a memory." He said.

" _What sort of sickness is infesting this nation? When the government steals your money and gives you nothing in return? When the government stands by and the UN, the very people behind NERV try the bastards that ran it? What is broken in our government when the so-called president is running for a fifth term?! When the President buys fancy cars and sends his kids to fancy schools with your money, while our people starve in the streets? I don't know folks, it's too big a question for me to answer. But I promise you I'll be the best damn surgeon I can be."_ Drawled the candidate in his Nevada rancher's drawl. " _I already know the first tumour to cut out: Jasper C. Cowpens."_ Thunderous applause. _"I served under him. God help me, I did. He was my commander in chief, and I killed for that man. Sent our boys to their DEATHS for that man. And was it worth it? I don't know, not if we sell out our country to the oligarchs and the foreigners. When we bring in the Japanese to steal our jobs, when we outsource our police to South African mercenaries, when we sell our justice system to the globalist United Nations cartel. Cowpens is a walking contradiction. The Unity Party? Don't make me laugh. We've never been less united, and that needs to change. That's why my slogan, a slogan taken from the first days of the American Revolution, is 'Unite or Die.' Because this country is dying. As a nation, we have never been weaker. Why? Because Cowpens is weak. Because he's a coward. Because he's a liar. He doesn't deserve to be president, and he never has."_

"Turn that shit off," said Al Basra, finally noticing the television. He raised an eyebrow. "You never struck me as a Rick Ranger supporter."

Rene snorted. "Support? I almost dragged his ass in front of the VTWIC back in '03 for dropping a tactical nuke on Luhansk during the war. How's that for support?"

"'03 huh? I was still in high-school."

"Don't remind me," said Rene, as he reached for the remote.

" _And I promise you, we will not let corrupt and effete UN bureaucrats like Rene Bonaventure handle the prosecution of a monster like Gendo Ikari. In my first days as president, I will demand that Gendo Ikari is handed over to US justice. Ikari will be tried in an American court, housed in an American prison, and executed in an American death chamber."_ That line, more than any other, attracted thunderous applause. Rene shut off the television, cutting off the jubilant crowd mid-cheer.

"Hey look at that, you got mentioned," said Ali. "Isn't it nice? Although I don't know if I'd buy effete… maybe corrupt."

"I was expecting a certain degree of anonymity, to be honest," said Rene. "Guess I was being naïve." He grimaced. " _Effete…_ if this son of a bitch is gonna' run as an independent and a populist he should put down the thesaurus." He turned to Ali, trying and failing to hide is annoyance. "How's Ottawa?"

"Shit," said Ali, simply. "You gonna' offer me a seat?"

Rene pointed at the plush leather chair that faced his desk. "Sit. Shit how? Last we talked you told me you were almost done with disclosure."

"We were, till they started stonewalling us. One minute, we're fairly cordial, then the next thing we know they're challenging three-hundred and eighty eight separate production orders, insisting hearings on every one of them. Standard delay tactics, that I'm sure we'll be able to get around, but it's a pain in the ass all the same." He said. "Even worse, they're not telling me what they want from us, meaning that our side of disclosure is delayed. Just getting the evidence that we're going to hand over together has been hell for us. We've got so much shit that it's hard to tell what's relevant, or even readable, considering half the computers we seized were inundated with seawater and…" he let the thought slide. "I'm tempted to just dump everything on it and let the fuckers sort it out themselves, but if we give them control over that, they'd just delay the process even more, and God knows it's been delayed already."

"See, I do dump the busy work on the drones sometimes," said Rene, chuckling to hide his nervousness.

"I fail to see what's so funny. I haven't been getting much sleep either lately. Starting to go a little bit insane to tell you the truth. It doesn't help that Canada is a boring shithole."

Rene laughed. " _Canada's_ a shit hole? Aren't you from Sadr City?"

"I was eight when I left, man. And it was Saddam City back then, before the Iranians took over. I grew up on Long Island."

" _Canada's_ a shit hole? Aren't you from Long Island?" repeated Rene, pouring himself a shot of rye, no ice, in lieu of fresh coffee. He was one of the last day-drinkers in the office, a dinosaur in the kinder, gentler 21st century jurisprudential world. When he started, everyone, secretaries included, was over the legal limit for the better part of the business day. "Christ, that even covers _boring_ too." He shook the bottle at Ali. "Drink? I never go into a meeting completely sober."

He shook his head. "It's six in the morning, you alchy bastard! Besides, last week was Ashura. I'm trying to see how long I can go pretending I'm a good Muslim for."

"How's that holding up?"

" _Kulo yomin Ashura, kulo ahrdin Karbala."_

"What's that mean?"

" _Every day is Ashura, every land is Karbala_. Treat every day like it's the holiest, don't put on an act. When you sin, you sin. Still, if I followed all the rules I wouldn't be able to do this job, and I think my job does more good in the world than me not drinking does." He smiled tiredly. "Still, I'm gonna' see if I can make it last another week. God will understand."

"We Catholic boys have it easy. They make us drink to get to Heaven." He downed the remainder of the liquor, and briefly considered another glass, but thought better of it.

"Longest I ever played the piety game was right after 3I. Up for _fajr_ every day, no pork, no booze, Mosque every Friday. Five prayers and everything. Hell, I even did the _Hajj_ , went to Qom, went to Karbala… first time back in the Middle East since I was a kid. Seems everyone was a little more religious for a while after the shit hit the fan. You ever notice that?"

"Not really," said Rene. "Guess we run in different circles." He decided fresh coffee _was_ a must, after all.

"They were saying how the Mahdi was going come back any time. Judgement day, you know? I believed it too. How could I not?" his shoulders sank. "Then… life takes over, you know? I guess that's how the Devil gets his hooks in you."

"Devil's had his hooks in me for a while." Rene said.

"You don't have to tell me that. We should head to the boardroom. Don't want to be late for your own meeting."

"Not yet. I've been meaning to talk to you."

"About what?"

"Well, considering some of the issues we've both been facing… I want you to offer a plea deal to Fuyutsuki in exchange for testimony against Ikari."

Ali's expression immediately turned stone cold, any pretence of friendliness replaced with the poker face of a consummate businessman. "Not a chance."

"Why not? I've tried to flip him for free, no dice. Deal or not, he's going to die in prison anyway. Why not throw him some false hope, maybe snag a bigger fish."

Ali clenched his fists. "We've talked about this weeks ago, Rene. There's no way I can let up on this guy. We have the evidence to get life, so I'm going for life. No mercy."

"We need to prioritize, Ali!" exclaimed Rene. "What the hell is the point of getting Fuyutsuki if we can't get _Ikari!_ My witness pool is shallow. Everything is hinging on two kids that, truth told, I have no confidence in. Give Fuyutsuki an out so we can build the case around him. I doubt he's got any loyalty left for Ikari, from the interview tapes I've seen."

Ali snorted. "You should've grabbed the damn kids three years ago from that immigrant camp like I told you, back when _you_ were running the Fuyutsuki investigation. Or _at least_ went after a subpoena. Then we wouldn't have been in this mess."

"Goddamn it, how many times have we went over this? Fuyutsuki _has_ a paper trail. Not MAGI shit, but his signature is on every high level document NERV ever produced. We got him nailed to the _fucking cross._ Fuyutsuki's an easy mark, that's why I'm letting you handle it." A look of anger flashed across Ali's face at that remark. "We got nothing like that for Ikari, clearly he knew enough to set up a fall guy."

Al Basra frowned, probably at the assertion that his task was _easy._ "Doesn't mean you couldn't have gotten the kids involved."

"I'd _love_ to have the kids testifying at the Fuyutsuki trial, but they turned us down."

"Why didn't you force them?" he said, crossing his arms.

"I told you, they had such little contact with him that it wasn't worth the bad blood in case Ikari came out of the ocean. Which he _did,_ by the way." He drummed his fingers on the desk impatiently. "I _could_ get a warrant, but why alienate them? Why get them to think we're the bad guys? Better to wait them out, let them stew in that unconstitutional shithole. Subtle pressure, you know, hurt 'em but don't let them know who's hurting them. Keep their goodwill in case we need them later, which, if you haven't noticed _we do._ That's why I wouldn't let you swoop in and force them to turn state witness. You young hotshots never play the long game, too impatient. I thought it would be just a matter of time 'til they flipped."

"Well, it wasn't. When he didn't answer your letter offering him residency status, maybe that was the time to act? And from what I heard they _do_ hate you, so what's your point? End result's exactly the same." Rene noticed that the bastard was smirking slightly. Probably involuntary, but he wanted to slap him all the same.

"Well, maybe I _did_ fuck up. How was I supposed to know they'd outsmart me by getting "married?" He said, finger quoting. "Regardless of whose fault this is, we're still going to have to make a sacrifice here."

"With all due respect, Mr. Bonaventure," said Ali, smirk replaced by that steely stare of his, "you gave me complete discretion to deal with anyone except Ikari as I see fit. Fuyutsuki was _second in command of NERV._ If we let him off, what the hell does that say about us?"

" _C_ _â_ _lisse_ , Ali, I'm not saying let the man walk!" shouted Rene, "I'm saying give him some incentive to cooperate. Half this job is cutting deals."

"Well, this is one deal I'm not cutting. Sorry, Rene. I can't do it."

Rene sighed theatrically. "Then give me Ibuki. Sixty years is too much anyway. She had no position in the command structure."

"No." said Ali, firmly. "Sixty years is already lax for someone as highly placed in the organization as her. She was instrumental in command and control for the Evas, high up in R&D… hell, she's in the second tier of The Pyramid!" he said, referring to the massive chart they kept which detailed the relative positions of NERV employees within the command structure, Returned and Unreturned alike. There were thirteen separate tiers, ranging from the Tier One, which contained the Pilots and the "Big Four" (Ikari, Katsuragi, Fuyutsuki, and Akagi) all the way down to faceless army of janitors, vending machine repair technicians, and data entry clerks. The total number of people implicated ran into the hundreds of thousands, only a small fraction of which had been charged.

"But are the judges going to see it that way? Maya's young, she's almost a kid herself. Promising scientist, lots of remorse…"

Ali's voice dripped with sarcasm. He mimicked Rene's accent with surprising accuracy. " _We should go easy on 'dat Megele fellow 'dere. Such a promising young doctor, so much potential."_

Rene rolled his eyes. "I'm not saying she doesn't _deserve_ it, I'm saying you might get burned and end up with a lower sentence than you expect. A plea deal at least is a sure thing. I saw it happen back in the Hague days dozens of times: Congo, Balkans, Nansha Islands. Hell, even in the VTWIC trials, which is why our friend, the General here-" he turned the TV back on for a moment, once again revealing Rick Ranger's scowl-y form as he gesticulated wildly to the crowd:

"… _any day the Angels could return, and yet Cowpens insists that Evangelions are no longer needed…"_

He shut the TV off again. "-is currently running for president rather than rotting in solitary confinement. Don't forget, we're not exactly dealing with hanging judges here - it _is_ an international tribunal, after all. At least if you cut a deal you can get some prison time, maybe more than they'd be sentenced to if we pressed, _and_ get something useful for the long game in the process. Fear of the unknown is our best asset. We should be using it more."

"With all due respect, Rene, the judges back in your day didn't exactly have their relatives liquefied by the people on trial. Plus, I'd hardly call _Maya Ibuki_ a goon. She knew what she was doing. She made her choice."

' _Back in your day?'_ thought Rene, _What the hell does that mean?_ He leaned forward on his chair. "I could order you to do it, you know. I'm still in charge here, last time I checked. Since you're being a bit of a prick right now, maybe I will."

Ali's face darkened, and contorted into a menacing scowl. "You could. But then we'd be at war." He said, quietly. "I'm your friend, Rene. I don't want to be at war with you."

A heavy silence hung in the air for a moment, until Ali spoke again. "If you can't build a case around your witnesses then maybe you should think about cutting a deal with your defendant."

"So the truth comes out at last." Said Rene, chuckling mirthlessly. "You don't give two shits about justice. You're in this for the notoriety."

"Maybe a bit." Said Ali, smiling coldly. "As if you're not. But if you're having that many issues with your witnesses maybe it _is_ time to think about cutting a deal. Just don't expect me to be the one to do it. If you want to offer Ikari a plea deal I can't stop you. But as for _my_ cases, if you're not going to work with me and respect my decisions, then stay the hell out of my way. And if you try to pull rank on me, I'll eat you alive."

Rene stared at him, carefully weighing his options. What should he say here? How should he say it? "Ali… I have some cause for concern with how the defense is handling the case for Gendo Ikari specifically. You say they're stonewalling you? Delay tactics? I've faced nothing of the sort. I haven't even met the bastards, except for a few quick meetings that didn't really do anything. They haven't asked for anything in disclosure, but they've given us everything we've asked for. When I talked to Ikari, there was no lawyer present."

"So? It's an ICC trial, not a US one. No right to an attorney during interrogation. You of all people should know that."

"Still, they should've fought me on it. They haven't fought anything. When we RICO'd their assets? No challenge. When we raided their shell corporations? No challenge. Only thing they fought us on was getting into NERV Worchester. Otherwise, it's been clear sailing." He said. "It's very strange."

"So what the hell are you complaining about?" asked Ali. "It sounds like your witness problems are solving themselves."

"It just doesn't feel right. For a while I was thinking they might be laying the groundwork for an appeal, but—"

"Maybe they just don't want to defend the bastard."

"What?"

"Have I ever told you about my uncle Hussayn?"

"Nope."

"He fought in the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s. I was raised on his war stories. about how he would run out into the sarin clouds and shrapnel, with nothing but an AK-47 and a shitty World War 2 gas mask, all for the glory of Arab unity and defiance to _Ajam_ aggression and blah, blah, blah. Point is, he was the biggest patriot you'd ever meet and he hated the "Iranian dogs" more than anything in the world. Problem was we're _Shi'a_ , so the _Ba'ath_ party didn't like us very much. So one night, long after we had moved to the States and left him behind, they came for him for no real reason, took him to Abu Ghraib and beat the shit out of him. Rubber hoses on the soles of the feet, electroshock, you name it."

"Jesus."

"Eventually, they let him go, but he was never quite the same. We had left by then, but we still talked to him sometimes. He stopped talking so much about loyalty. And guess who was there in the streets in '01, when the same Iranians that my uncle fought against were at the gates of Baghdad to finish what they started? When the radio was telling every Iraqi patriot to grab a gun and push back the invaders, who do you think was there with the militia to burn down the Republican Guards' barracks, with them all still inside?" he smiled grimly. "Who do you think cheered as the man he was once prepared to die for was strangled to death by the militia with a two foot rope from the arm of his own statue?"

"What the hell is your point?" said Rene, more annoyed than transfixed.

"My point is that loyalty, pride, professionalism… it only trumps hate, and I mean _true_ hate, when your opponent is strong. When he's weak…" he mimicked a choking noise, stood up and patted Rene on the back. "Anyway, if the defence wants to throw the trial because of some grudge, I say let them! It's certainly not our job to stop them."

"Yeah," said Rene, staring out the south facing window that overlooked the East River, the top of the Empire State Building and World Trade Center barely visible against the roiling storm clouds that crept in from the west. "I guess not."

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE: 6 months and all I get is a lousy OC chapter?! What the hell?! Sad to say, but this (slightly less than) half of the chapter was actually (largely) written since about September, but it's been through editing hell plus IRL stuff that made things a bit difficult. The second half of Chapter 6 (which is still OC but a different POV) will be out in considerably less than 6 months (probably a few days), and then Chapter 7, which is NOT an OC chapter will be out slightly after that (I've already made some good progress on it.) In any case, this chapter's a bit of a slow burner so I feel bad calling it a chapter in its own right. It's a lot of set up and character development. Most of it takes place in an office. Such cases.

In any case, I'm glad that this fic has had mostly good reception so far. Let's see if I can avoid driving it STRAIGHT into the ground.

As always, thanks to Glor for tolerating my bullshit.

-FD


	7. Chapter 7 - Le Bonhomme Sept Heures

CHAPTER 7: LE BONHOMME SEPT-HEURES

" _Then they'll take you to Cloughprior and shove you in the ground,_

 _but you'll stick your head back out and shout "we'll have another round!"_

 _At the graveside of Cuchulainn we'll kneel around and pray_

 _And God is in His heaven, and Billy's down by the bay."_

 _-_ Shane McGowan, The Sickbed of Cuchulainn

* * *

Grading tests was an exercise in futility. Asuka was midway through her thirty-second midterm exam of the morning, and yet the stack of paper in front of her did not seem to be shrinking at all. She felt her IQ drop several points as she worked her way through this student's clumsy proof of the Braunschweig Destrudo Constant, a concept she mastered at age eight and a half. At this rate, she'd be all the way down in the 170s before lunch. Finding nothing worthy of awarding points for, she scrawled a big red "0" next to the question and moved on.

The damn bells in the church had been peeling since sunrise, because of Impact Day, but she had been up long before then. She found that she couldn't sleep much lately, not due to nightmares (though those had been increasing in frequency lately) but because of good old-fashioned insomnia. She had struggled with bouts of it even before her time as a pilot. And although she was pissed off to be up this early on her day off, she still took it as a good sign. It meant that maybe, just maybe, she was getting out of her funk. Right now, her main emotion was one of mild annoyance. At the bells, at the fact that she had a stack of papers to do, at the fact that the department was giving her the run-around on funding, and at the fact her thesis progress was stalled by… recent developments.

Her other emotion, the one that she deliberately chose to suppress, was an ever-present and gnawing sense of terror, that if left unchecked threatened to overwhelm everything and send her into a panic attack. She knew what was coming tomorrow. Her first meeting with the lawyers. The official beginning of an ordeal that had already been extremely painful. She didn't want to be in the spotlight anymore. And yet, she knew the spotlight would be on her soon, like it or not. While the sun was up, at least, she could lie to herself and pretend like the meeting was still a while away. But the hours were ticking away, and part of her felt like a condemned prisoner.

For his part, Shinji was still asleep in the bedroom that adjoined her "home-office." He had been sleeping longer as of late, usually well past noon. There was little reason to think today would be any different, since the bells had been going for an hour now to no effect. Asuka wanted to chalk it up to laziness, but she couldn't. Because as bad as she felt these days, she knew he felt ten times worse.

She leaned back in her chair and almost hit one of the walls of her office. It was tiny, due to the fact that it was at one point ostensibly a walk-in closet. Before they had moved in the space had been used primarily for "indoor horticulture" by the previous tenants, as evidenced by the mysterious stains on the wall and the faint skunk-y smell that never seemed to go away entirely. It was a pain in the ass to get the landlord to come in and remove the mould left over from the obvious small-scale grow-op. It was even more of a pain in the ass to get him to allow Asuka to cover three of the four walls with the massive whiteboards which she used to work on various equations and mathematical formulae. To her, it made perfect sense, but for most others seemed to be the arcane scrawl of a schizophrenia patient. He seemed to have a pathological aversion to them putting any kind of hole in the wall. "No screw! No hole!" he would yell at them in his strange Russo-English pidgin. "Is bad for house value!" Eventually she managed to wear him down enough to concede permission by having a very loud and very long argument over the phone with him in Russian, her seventh and worst language, which was still miles better than his English.

Come to think of it, putting up the whiteboards was how they discovered the mould in the first place.

She quickly tabulated the grade of the student, who had either given up or run out of time on the last three blank questions. That, at least, was a mercy. She quickly added up the points and wrote "30%" on top of the cover page, before throwing the test in "done" pile. He had done better than many in the class. Asuka had the second highest fail rate of any professor at MIT, by far the highest of any first-year professor. This was a statistic that had given her a perverse sense of pride. She never deliberately made anything too hard, at least, she didn't think she did. She just had high expectations. These people wanted to swim on her side of the pool? Fine. But you had to be able to keep your head above water, or else drown with the rest. That was what the bastards that had ruined her life got wrong. Evolution wasn't something you could force. Evolution was just a product of natural selection.

Still, she'd be lying if she said that she didn't have her own motivations. Within two classes, a good quarter of the students in her class had dropped out and moved on to something else when they realized that Metaphysical Biology wouldn't involve much "angel porn," (her term). Once these grades were released, she was sure that that would go down to less than half the original number, which meant less work for her. Again, it wasn't like she was trying to trick them, but there was a very good reason that her first midterm was well before the deadline to switch classes. Asuka was not a teacher. She didn't like teaching, she wasn't especially good at teaching, and the only reason she did it at all was because it was a requirement to get her PhD. A tick in a box. So, she would teach. But she would teach her way. Weirdly enough, she had gotten no departmental complaints yet. Why would they complain? She was a one-woman bulwark against grade inflation.

She sighed as she grabbed the next exam. At least this one would be quick. There was nothing written on it at all, except a tiny "I'm sorry" written in the first answer section. She hurriedly leafed through it and noticed the answer sections were left blank, aside from a few wet marks that looked suspiciously like tear stains. She wrote a zero on top of the page and did a quick search in her class list on her computer. As luck would have it, the student had dropped out on the date of the exam. So, she crumpled up the paper into a tight ball, and flung it through the open door in a wide ark over Shinji's sleeping form into the small wastebasket they kept next to their nightstand. An impressive shot for a girl with next to no depth perception. She pumped her arm in celebration. _Another one down._

She worked like that, robotically almost, for about an hour. Of the ten or so papers she graded, three had passed, and two of those just barely. She was careful to avoid letting her mind go on autopilot, because then the _thoughts_ would start. And that was the exact thing she wanted to avoid at this moment.

Thoughts and apprehension about the trial were forefront, but behind them, squeezed in the darker corners of her mind, was the crushing futility of it all. As much as she hated him, she could give a shit whether Gendo Ikari was convicted or not. Whether he lived or died. For as much as he hurt her, he was nothing to her now. She just wanted to be left alone.

No, she was more worried about Shinji than anything. Because deep down, she knew he still craved his attention and his love, despite assertions to the contrary. After all he had done to him, he was still his father. It was he, not she, that would be most negatively affected by this. She knew how fragile she was, and knew that something like this had the potential to destroy him.

She sighed and put down her pen. It was time for a break. As she got up, she winced. Her ribs were killing her from sitting hunched forward for so long, and her bad eye was even worse from having to read her student's handwriting. She got up and crept past Shinji, who was clutching her pillow tightly as a substitute for her, still fast asleep despite the bells which were still peeling, much to Asuka's annoyance. She briefly considered crawling back in bed with him, but he didn't seem to be distressed and she figured he'd be better off just sleeping. She did, however, grab the small bottle of Percocet she kept in the drawer and dry-swallowed two in order to kill the pain.

The coffee was lukewarm but she drank it anyway (black, three sugars) and spread out on their cheap-ass couch. IKEA called it a _Ficka_ , Swedish for "pocket" due to its small size, a name that was suspiciously close to _Ficken_ , German for something else entirely. Ironically it was technically a loveseat. It cost $300 and its left armrest was already broken, after one incident during better times in which the couch lived up to its name.

News broadcast. _"...with ethnic tension at an all-time high, riots are expected in major cities across-"_ *CLICK*

Documentary. _"…profiling the New York City building magnate who had a spiritual awakening after Second Impact selling all of his worldly possessions to live a simple, holy life, feeding millions around the world. He leads a self-funded Buddhist monastery in Upstate New York where he attracts thousands from around the world who travel to learn from his simple yet profound philosophy. "It's all about the oms, folks. Balances your chakras, it's tremendous. Okay? We gotta hear more oms. Let's go. Oooommmmm. Come on folks, I wanna hear more oms. More oms in the back—"_ *CLICK*

Old movie. _"Looks like a meteor, captain."_

" _Yes, but maybe we'd better investigate."_ *CLICK*

Wing nut. _"…Project Blue Beam, everybody knows that the Angels were just a hoax that the government used to control the population and—"_ *CLICK*

She stopped eventually on one of the higher numbered channels, on which a preacher wearing a sequined outfit gesticulated to the sound of shitty country-rock in some Appalachian mega-church, populated by the type of toothless hill-folk that Asuka liked to pretend she wasn't descended from on her father's side.

"I can _feel_ the Holy Spirit _watching us_ , brothers and sisters!" the charlatan, whose cracked makeup shone under hot television spotlights yelled to the crowd, his greasy face twisted up in faux-spiritual orgasm, "Do you feel the presence of the _Lord_?" Cheering followed; the crowd was eating it up. They stretched their arms out at him longingly the weird way that certain kinds of Christians did. There was a quick dissolve to an out-dated computer graphic as an announcer began to speak.

" _For five years, Pastor Jimmy Claxton has been reuniting families through the grace of the Lord. Through tested, Biblically based prayer solutions like the patented Jimmy Claxton Dead Sea Miracle Sand, Pastor Jimmy can and_ _ **will**_ _reunite the faithful with their relatives, friends, and loved ones."_

An overweight woman sat in front of a green screen projecting papyrus covered in a stock image of Koine Greek Bible pages chosen at random. "I thought my three-year-old son was gone forever after the Rapture, but after taking the Pastor Jimmy Prayer Course and using the Dead Sea Miracle Sand, he was back within a few weeks."

An elderly man sat uncomfortably in a folding chair, his face gouty, his t-shirt stained. "Before I met Pastor Jimmy, I thought my wife was gone for good. On the same day the Dead Sea Miracle Sand arrived in the mail, I got a call from the government that she had come back."

" _Don't let hopelessness hold you back, for it is written that 'With God, all things are possible.' And for just one small donation, one small gift of love-"_

She shut the TV off, unwilling to listen to anymore bullshit. That was the kind of world she lived in, where people were selling jars of dirt to gullible or desperate idiots, exploiting their stupidity for profit. This was the sort of thing that gave her a low opinion of religion in the first place. There had always been snakes out there, but of late, they had become all the more numerous, and all the more predatory.

Outside, a police car drove by, then another one, and another. Passively, she wondered what the cops were doing out here. Maybe a domestic dispute? It was a holiday after all, so most of the neighbours were almost certain to be drunk. Still, it seemed like overkill, especially when the armoured personnel carriers began to rumble by. She had heard that there were riots in the neighbourhood in the past, but the idea seemed foreign to her. They wouldn't do that sort of thing now, right? She was so disconnected from her neighbours that she sometimes forgot where she lived. The only time she spoke to Americans was at work, and she had no friends unless she counted Shinji. She had never lived in America before, despite her lineage, and had visited it only a few times. It didn't _seem_ violent. Not back then.

Suddenly, she heard her cell phone ringing on the kitchen table, its tinny speakers struggling to overpower the church bells that were _still fucking ringing_. She went over to it, further aggravating her ribs in the process, and saw that it was work calling.

 _Shit,_ she thought grimly. _Not now._

"Hello?" She said, pensively. "Why are you calling me? It's a holiday."

"Hi, Asuka…" it was her doctoral advisor, Dr. Jane Goff. She was a woman just over middle age, silver haired and underweight, with good bone structure and skin and a terrible, nasally upper-class Boston Brahmin accent that made her sound far older and far smarter than she was. She was considered by most to be a pioneer in their field and in Asuka's opinion undeservedly so. In truth, she'd simply had enough sense to stay out of GEHIRN or NERV, preferring to climb the university ladder rather than get her hands dirty. When the shit hit the fan and most of the others in the Metaphysical Sciences field started dying off en masse or getting hauled away in cuffs for crimes against humanity and nature, it was she that remained standing by virtue of laziness. The woman hadn't published a paper since the mid-nineties, and even that was derivative and unimpressive, to Asuka at least. Her skills were in administration: lobbying for funding, begging for donations, and general academic prostitution. She was a bureaucrat, not a scientist; one of the many varieties of people Asuka detested. Even so, the girl had enough sense to bite her tongue and show a little deference. She wasn't _stupid,_ after all.

"Did the government come through yet?" Asked Asuka, knowing already that they hadn't. "Because I'd really like to get started-"

"No, Asuka, listen." There was a deep breath on the other end of the phone, "We need you to take a break."

"What?"

"A break. A _temporary_ break. From teaching. And research, too, any sort of work. _Temporarily."_ She made sure to stress the word _temporarily._ Asuka's hands began to tremble.

"I don't understand."

"We already have a replacement lined up, so you don't have to worry about-"

"On what grounds?" She asked icily as she tried to shove down her rage.

The voice on the other end of the line grew quiet for a moment. There was an audible sigh, and then she said, "Well, we know that you have some legal… _difficulties_ … to work through. Regarding _your past."_ Another awkward silence. "You've already missed a few classes, and we're getting complaints about some… uh… _erratic_ behaviour. When we hired you, we knew that you're–"

"Realized you were hiring a crazy person?" Asuka said, her voice dripping with venom. "Just say it. Everybody says it behind my back anyway. Everybody who _knows._ "

"Asuka, please! It's not that and you know it!" Goff lectured, sounding more like an annoyed teacher than anyone with genuine concern. "We knew about your… _experiences_ … and we were, and _are_ willing to work around them. We all know how gifted you are, or else we would never have taken you on in the first place. This is purely a practical matter. The department is under enough scrutiny as it is and the last thing we need is-"

"Oh, so it's _cowardice_ then!" She yelled mockingly, not even noticing the stream of cop cars, paddy wagons, and APCs that continued to pour past her living room window. "See, I thought that you had some integrity left. I guess I was wrong."

"For God's sake Asuka, be _professional!"_ The horrible pearl-clutcher gasped in her ivory tower, outraged at the prospect of someone refusing to kiss her ancient ass, "The decision is already made. There's nothing that can be done. By you _or_ I. This was an order from the dean. I had no say in it."

Asuka could smell a lie from a mile away, but instead of calling her out on it she just screeched, "Fuck professionalism!" Before she could lay into her anymore she caught sight of the constant stream of police vehicles. Confusion trumped rage and she said, quietly for once, "what the hell?"

"You're going through a difficult time," said Dr. Goff, "so I'll overlook your response. I wish you well, and I hope to speak to you soon under better circumstances." She hung up before Asuka could get another word in.

" _Bitch!"_ Asuka yelled as she tossed her phone, Frisbee-like, at the wall. The screen, which was already cracked, cracked again. Asuka didn't care.

As she felt the adrenaline subside, she braced herself subconsciously for the tide of self-hatred and panic to overtake her. Surprisingly, it didn't come. Instead, she was overcome with an overwhelming relief. As much as she didn't want to admit it, she was glad to be free of her university obligations. Pissed off, yes, but glad. _Is this progress?_ She wondered. _Or have I just completely checked out?_

Even so, she could use some warmth at the moment. She decided to go back to back to bed. Shinji, who was incredibly still asleep despite the yelling, had the right idea. Also, the damn bells had finally stopped, meaning that maybe, _just maybe,_ she could get some sleep. She began to walk towards the bedroom when there was a very loud knock at the door that made her jump a little. The knock was insistent, and she could tell that whoever it was wasn't here to deliver good news.

" _Open up,"_ demanded a voice. _"It's the police."_

 _Shit_.

Asuka crept towards the door hesitantly and looked outside through the peep-hole. It was the cops alright. Two identical 5 foot something chrome-domes with dark utility sunglasses and shiny stainless-steel badges and dark blue uniforms.

 _Shit!_

She opened the door a crack. "What?" she asked tersely.

"Are you uh… _Assookah_ Langley–" the cop paused, taking a breath as he tried to figure out how to pronounce her name, "–uhh… _Soohhhhhriieu?"_

"I'm Asuka Langley-Soryu, yes," she said, sure to pronounce the Japanese words _extra_ Japanese-y. "What do you want?"

"You need to come with us, ma'am. It ain't safe here." The cop's partner was silent throughout the exchange, opting instead to glower.

"Why?" She asked, crossing her arms angrily, "we haven't done anything." _This is just what I need right now._

"Riots, ma'am. It's just a precaution, ma'am, but we think it's gonna get pretty bad," he said. "So, uh, you should probably get packing–"

"Do you think we're afraid of a few riots? We're not coming," she said, matter-of-factly. "We can protect ourselves."

"You haven't seen Southie riots," said the cop. "Besides, it's not a suggestion."

"We're not coming," she said. Then, using the full extent of her legal training, she smugly asked, "am I free to go, or am I being detained?"

The cop looked confused. "Uh… yes," he said, "that's right. You're being detained. We got the court order right here."

 _Well that's something that doesn't happen in the videos._ "Oh… uh…"

Shinji, finally awake, stumbled out of the bedroom rubbing his eyes. "What's going on?" He asked, in Japanese.

"Fucking pigs are arresting us," she said, also in Japanese, immediately regretting the choice of words.

"Hey can you guys uh–" stammered the timid cop.

" _Arresting us_? Why?" Asked Shinji, a look of terrified confusion spreading over his face. She shuddered internally when she contemplated what he was thinking.

It was official. The bastards had hurt Shinji. Now she was in kill mode. But she couldn't afford to pop off now, not when the Gestapo were at the gates. She suppressed her rage for a moment and put on a mask of cold professionalism. The same mask she wore when she was piloting.

The cops, for their part, were unaware of the internal drama playing out before them. " –maybe speak English so we can…"

She tried to bring the tension in her husband down. "Riots or something. They say it's for our own protection."

The silent cop spoke, never once breaking his death stare, "Listen, we can throw you to the ground and take you to jail in cuffs and slap an obstruction of justice charge on you, or we can take you to a hotel. The choice is yours, but I suggest you make it quickly." Just then, she noticed that he had his hand on his Taser. Something told her that he would not hesitate to use it. _Oh, you son of a bitch._

Asuka opened her mouth to scream back a response, but Shinji said, "We'll come." He turned to Asuka, his eyes pleading for calm, "…right?"

Instead of shouting, she put the mask of professionalism back on. "Fine," she said, shooting daggers of ice into the vital organs of the cops. Then, merely for the sake of maintaining some level of control over the situation, she said, "but we're taking our own car."

The cops looked at each other hesitantly, before finally relenting in the interests of avoiding a fight. "Deal. You have fifteen minutes to pack."

The cops looked very relieved indeed.

* * *

"You rolled over like a bitch back there, you know that, right?" She said as she stared at the ass end of the escort car ahead of them. Not that the escort was really necessary, there was next to no traffic today, something unheard of in Boston. The sky was dark, made even darker by the oversized knock-off Ray bans she was wearing, which made her look like a highway patrol woman or an undersized Middle Eastern dictator.

They were not the sort of thing she wore ordinarily, but she made a point of not letting these bastards see the faint scars that surrounded her bad eye. Even more secretive were the ones on her wrists, which she showed no one besides Shinji. "They have no right to do shouldn't have let them just–" her train of thought was interrupted. " _Fucking move_!" She yelled as she leaned into her horn, which was custom-installed and far louder than the average car horn, to protest the "snail's pace" (85 miles per hour) of the escort car in front of her.

"I don't want to fight right now," Shinji said lethargically, noticing her obvious frustration. "Please Asuka? This day is already bad enough."

"I'm not _fighting_ ," she said in a tone that suggested otherwise, "I just wonder where the hell your balls went."

"What balls?" He asked in what could pass for a self-depreciative attempt at levity in a normal person. The tone, though, had no humour in it.

She jerked into the left lane in frustration, in a futile attempt to get ahead of the escort car. "Enough of this 'poor me' crap. If you're trying to be cute, it's not working, and if you're fishing for sympathy –" just then, the lead car quickly cut in front of her and, as if to punish her for her bad behaviour, slowed down considerably. The other escort car, which had been trailing them, now kept pace with her in the right lane, preventing her from getting around. " _Assholes_!" She exclaimed, honking again with renewed fury.

"I wasn't fishing for–"

"Shut up."

There was silence for a few moments, as neither quite knew how to react to Asuka's curt response. "Are you mad at me?" Asked Shinji finally, in a small, sad, child-like voice.

 _Yes._ "No," she lied, eyes still fixated on tinted back window of the car ahead of them, focusing pure hatred into it. "I'm mad at _them,_ " she said. "I wish you would be too."

"I am!" He said.

"You have a funny way of showing it." She honked some more.

"What do you want me to do?" He asked, frustration bubbling up in his voice. "They were going to _arrest_ us, Asuka!"

"I don't know? _Defend_ me? Like a _man_ would do," she said, coldly. "Instead you just let these bastards come in to _our_ home and drag us out."

"I didn't _let_ them!"

She grunted dismissively. "Fine. _Whatever_. I' m not in the mood for this shit right now, okay? Forget I said anything."

The car was silent for the rest of the drive.

* * *

The hotel that they were billeted in was, surprisingly enough for something provided by the government, one of the most expensive in the city: Howth Castle Boston. The fact that they were spending quite heavily on them gave Asuka a perverse sense of satisfaction. If she was going to be their prisoner, she was glad that she was at least a very expensive prisoner. They were in the heart of downtown Boston, surrounded on all sides by construction cranes and glass skyscrapers which meshed poorly with the colonial architecture.

The streets were clogged with unfortunates. The downtown core of every city in the world was choked with them now, and in truth Boston, a rich city, had fewer than most. But even so you saw the meth-heads and the junkies. The war-ravaged, limbless veterans begging fruitlessly for scraps, shivering in the cold and battered and spit upon by average citizens too wracked by their own trauma to bother pitying them.

Among them were the Jesus people, competing in desperation to sell salvation, some true believers and other charlatans, both camps attempting to pad Christian doctrine (or, in an increasing number of cases, other religions, some ancient and others new) with new and exciting features, sometimes for shock value to attract rubes in the cases of the more fraudulent strains, sometimes in an attempt to answer the new and _very_ uncomfortable questions that had been thrust upon it by twin apocalypses. The Salvation Army was also there too, for some reason, despite the fact that Christmas was still months away.

The hotel itself was kept largely vagrant free by the security guards who shuffled them along or, if they got rowdy, beat the shit out of them. Security was the most lucrative industry in the world right now, for obvious reasons. Every business offering anything of value had some sort of guard, whether they be a professional team from one of the big firms like OBB or a simple shotgun or baseball bat tucked under the counter. It was obvious that the hotel had amped up its security even more because of their presence. Like it or not, they were VIPs again.

The lobby was faux-opulent and gaudy. Asuka, who by divine right was always correct about what constituted good taste, gave the décor a solid D. It also had a creepy vibe because of its sheer desolation. Aside from a few staff that were milling about, they and the cops were the only ones visible. The staff eyed their "guests" nervously. Clearly rumours had spread already. Asuka shot them a hostile look, and they seemed to flinch at it.

They were led directly to the elevators, with no need to check in. The atmosphere inside was tense, both guards staring at the elevators with a calm sense of purpose, ready to tackle them if they ran or shoot them dead if they fought.

"You are not to leave your room until we get you tomorrow morning, okay?" said one of the guards as they exited the elevator. He had a soft voice, far too soft for a man of his size. "We don't want you sneaking back to your house. We got every staircase and every elevator covered, so don't even bother testing us."

"This can't be legal," muttered Asuka, who felt compelled to offer some resistance.

"Legality don't matter too much these days, trust me," said the guard. "You wanna' take the government to court, be my guest. I ain't got no dog in that fight. But if you try to leave tonight, I _will_ arrest you and I _may_ taze you. Understand?"

"Yes, officer. There won't be any issues," said Shinji, who tried in vain to mask his fear with politeness.

"Good," said the guard as he swiped his key-card. They were not given a copy. "Well, here we are. Feel free to order room service, on us. Anything you like. It's a uh… token of appreciation. Oh, and take your luggage with you when you're done with the meeting tomorrow. You ain't coming back here." He paused for a second. "Oh, and before I forget, don't worry about your house. FBI's set up a guard around that."

"Thank you, officer. That is very kind of you," said Shinji, robotically. "We are very grateful for the hospitality."

The guard merely grunted and shut the door. They were left alone.

Asuka looked at Shinji with disgust and flopped down on the bed. Shinji shot her his trademark hang-dog look, opened his mouth as if to say something, then thought better of it and took a seat by the window. He struggled for a moment to open it, then realized the effort was futile.

Asuka debated turning on the television to break the silence, but she decided against it. Her head was killing her now, the ever-present ringing in her ears rising beyond tolerable levels. Additional noise would only further annoy her. She briefly attempted sleep, but that proved fruitless despite her earlier tiredness. Instead, she reached inside the nightstand and out of pure boredom withdrew a Gideon Bible, that strange relic of a simpler time. She turned to a random page, careful not to tear the thin, cheap paper.

" _The priests blew the trumpets. When the people heard the blast of the trumpets, they gave a thunderclap shout. The wall fell at once. The people rushed straight into the city and took it. They put everything in the city under the holy curse, killing man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey."_

Lovely.

She put the book aside, placing her phone on top of it, turned over, and tried to nap. She never achieved it. Every time she felt like she was close to relaxing, she felt pangs of stress well up in her stomach. She would fidget and try to calm herself, but moments later they would come back. She could feel her nerve endings vibrate, almost itching her. She wanted to run somewhere, anywhere, but she couldn't. So she just lay there, waiting.

She lay like that for some time, until she heard the sound of rain on the window. The sky had darkened considerably. It was late afternoon by now, but the streets were dark, brightened only by the occasional flash of lightning. The rain was coming down in great sheets, battering against the window. The wind moaned, ghostly and distant.

"It's really coming down out there," she said, sneaking up behind him. "You okay? You've been sitting there for hours.

He only grunted in response.

She put a hand on his shoulder and he recoiled. "Jesus, Shinji, I'm trying to be nice!" She said. "Are you mad at me?"

"No," he said, unconvincingly.

"I don't believe you."

He sighed. "Okay, a little."

"I shouldn't have yelled at you in the car. I'm under a lot of stress. I got fired today."

"Really?"

"Well, I was put on a _leave of absence._ But I know what that _really_ means."

"It's probably for the best."

She crossed her arms. "You're starting to sound like them."

"Sorry," he said, flinching instinctively and turning back towards the window. "I don't want to fight anymore, Asuka, I—"

She flopped down next to him, squeezing him to the very edge of the hotel armchair. "You're probably right," she said. "Truth is, my students fucking hate me."

"That's just because—"

"I'm a bitch," she said. "It's okay. I know it. I'm not a crowd pleaser. Screw 'em. It's the fact I can't work on my project anymore that really bothers me." _Mama._ "Anyway, I'm sorry for yelling at you earlier."

"It's fine. You had a bad day. I understand."

"Bad month, more like." _Bad year. Bad life._ She slipped an arm around him. "It's kind of pretty, you know."

"What?"

"The storm," she said, still staring at the storm. A flash of lightning lit up the distant sky. Asuka felt chills down her spine. It felt as if the electricity of the storm had entered her, and taken up residence in her stomach.

"I'm just thinking about the storm gutter. This wind's going to knock the rest of the leaves off," he said, sighing. "I just cleaned the damn thing out."

"Romantic as always, Shinji," she giggled. "You know, I was afraid of storms when I was little."

"Really?"

"Yeah. The thunder used to freak me out. It's so _loud,_ " she said, just as a particularly loud crack of thunder resounded, shaking the window slightly. "See? I used to hide under my bed sometimes."

"I liked storms," he said. "They… relaxed me. Plus it cut through the heat. It got really stuffy sometimes in the summer. We never had air conditioning."

"Weren't you raised in the country?"

He nodded. "Yeah, in Kamikuishiki," he said. "It wasn't too far from Toyko-3 but it felt like a whole different world. Much quieter. It was a pretty nice town, actually." He sighed and stared back out at the city. "Now it's probably underwater."

"It's best not to think about that," said Asuka, sensing his distress. "Are you ready for tomorrow?"

"I guess," he said. "I don't have to wear a suit, do I? Because I don't-"

"Wear what you want," she said. "You don't have to perform for these bastards." There was more venom in her voice than she intended, but she made no effort to take any of it back. She felt Shinji draw her closer.

"No," he said. "You're right."

They were silent for a while.

"Asuka..."said Shinji, eventually. "Sometimes I – I think you're drifting away from me," he said. "I'm scared that I'm going to lose you."

"Where would I even drift to?" She asked dreamily, knowing the answer already.

Just then, the power went out.

"Well, I guess that rules out room service," she said.

"I'm not hungry."

"Me neither. Hotel food is shit anyway." She eyed him expectantly. "You want to just go to bed?"

"It's only–"

She pointed at the digital clock beside their bed, which was blank. "Clock's not working. Who cares what time it is?"

"Fair eno–" She cut him off mid-sentence – kissing him hungrily, almost violently. She pushed him to the floor, claiming him for herself, animal instincts overwhelming rationality. The nervous electricity she felt beneath her skin drove her, she dug her nails into his skin and straddled him, feeling his heart stir in his chest and other parts stir in other places. She had been deprived of him for too long. She would have him now and no one, not the government, not her depression, and certainly not Shinji himself would keep her from him.

Eventually, she realized that he probably needed air. "No more fighting," she said, breathlessly. "No more bullshit, okay? We're a team. We're all we have. So we need to be strong for each other, okay?"

"I—"

"Shut up," she said. "Just say yes."

"O-okay." She kissed him again, harder this time. They would not speak in discernable words until morning.

In the adjoining room, the eight FBI agents tasked with monitoring Shinji and Asuka through bugs implanted in the walls shifted uncomfortably in their office chairs. Their audio feed was still up and running, but the power outage had knocked out the video. Most were glad, as it was far less awkward to listen than to watch. But a few of them were secretly disappointed, and they silently cursed the storm for their misfortune.

* * *

It was night or early morning, and the storm was still going strong. Asuka was caught in the borderlands between sleep and dream, contentedly half-listening to the gentle snores of her boyfriend – no, husband – beside her as her tired mind wandered from place to place, finally free from the hell it had been trapped in the past few weeks. She allowed herself to bask for a while, laying on her back, her mind cloudy, her thoughts formless and liquid.

As she lay there though, she felt the temperature begin to drop precipitously. It was gradual at first, beyond notice, but eventually Asuka found that her joints, which still pained her since the battle despite the fact that they were seemingly healed, began to ache. She wondered subconsciously whether or not a window was open, or whether the air conditioning was set to the lowest setting possible. She briefly considered getting up to check, but instead she tried to steal some blanket from Shinji. She could not. She was frozen in place.

Her eyes shot open. The room was pitch-black, covered in smothering, unnatural darkness that seemed to have a material thickness to it. It choked her. She tried to jump out of bed but she couldn't, her limbs were numb and motionless. Panic set in quickly, her heart beating against her chest. She tried to say something, but the words caught in her throat. She tried to wake Shinji, but he remained asleep, dead to the world and unable to help her. She stared at the darkness and knew something lurked in it.

And then, as if on cue a pair of eyes appeared out of the darkness, burning like coals. Unlike coals, they were not red. They were gray, devoid of any personality or soul. They emitted no light and yet were visible all the same. They were evil, she decided. And they were dead set on her. The walls of the room seemed to bend inward as the figure loomed over her dispassionately yet menacingly. Stray sources of light from outside were sucked into it, leaving long distorted arches through the air like sparkler tips.

She could see that the figure was tall, but that was about all she could see of it. It was a living shadow, a clump of negative space floating inches from her face. It certainly wasn't some intruder. It wasn't even human, at least, not a conventional human. She got the same feeling looking at it as she did looking at an Angel, that of vague foreboding – impending doom. Reflexively, Asuka tried to lash out at the figure, but she couldn't. Her body screamed at her, urging her to fight or flee, but neither option was available. A trapped animal, unable to even scream in terror or beg for mercy.

For a moment, Asuka knew that she was about to die. Again.

She sat up bolt stiff, sweat covering her naked body, chest heaving, panic seizing every limb, now suddenly liberated and free to flail. She scrambled thoughtlessly for the nearest source of light in the room – her phone, scraping the bare wood of the nightstand with her nails as she grabbed it, leaving long scratches in the varnish. She opened it frantically, finally illuminating the room. It looked mundane as ever. The presence, whatever it was, was gone.

She felt Shinji stir beside her. "What's wrong?" He asked sleepily.

"B-bad dream," she said, her eyes filled with tears that she quickly wiped away. She felt stupid for being so afraid, but some irrational part of her wasn't convinced that it had been a dream. Her dreams, horrific as they were, at least had an air of unreality to them, or else were replays of past events. This had been something entirely new.

Shinji sidled up to her but she rebuffed his touch. "Not now," she said. "It's time to get up soon, anyhow." The digital display of the nightstand clock, which floated in the darkness like the presence's eyes read "7:06." Power, at least, was back.

"Already? It's still so dark."

"The storm," she said, simply. "I'm going to go take a shower."

Shinji grumbled and within moments resumed snoring. Asuka crept over to the bathroom, as alert and wary as she was on combat patrols, closed the door, and locked it tightly.

* * *

The day was cold, almost winter-like. The storm had passed, but the sky was still dark and hazy and thick with clouds. It was a mercy that the walk to the lawyer's office was very short. Even so, they were still escorted by an army of cops every step of the way.

The office was located in a generic looking office building, more concrete than glass, probably built sometime in the forties or fifties. It was tall but it was dwarfed by the taller, newer buildings that surrounded it. The cops mercifully left them once they were inside. They rang for the elevator and went up to the sixth floor.

It smelled like a dentist's office. In part the floor _was_ occupied by a dentist's office. Asuka crinkled her nose. She had always hated the dentist, even before certain events had given her a fear of it so pronounced that she refused to go for any reason. When she was in the camp, she refused teeth inspections, rare as they were. She couldn't stand being trapped and supine as sharp implements prodded her. It reminded her too much of the past.

They sat impatiently in a makeshift waiting room. Asuka drummed her fingernails impatiently on the plastic chair, Shinji sat bolt upright, stiff and unmoving. Why the hell they had to wait, Asuka didn't know. They were important enough to book an entire hotel but not important enough to be seen right away. The _nerve_ of this guy!

The office was clearly still in the process of being set up, Asuka and Shinji had to get up and move more than once as workmen painted the walls and wired the lighting. They were, for the most part, Cape Verdeans, an ethnic group common to Boston even before their country sank into the ocean after Second Impact, causing nearly all the survivors to be relocated en-masse to New England. There were a few Japanese as well since every service industry in the world seemed to employ cheap Japanese labour now. They spoke Portuguese- a language that Asuka didn't speak- with their colleagues, so Asuka reasoned that they were probably Brazilian _dekasegi_ that had moved back to Japan for the employment boom that the Second Impact and NERV had spurred in the early 2000s. They had been treated like trash in Japan even though they were ethnically Japanese, but in America they were probably the most easily integrated and successful of the Asian refugees, since culturally they were the least Asian.

"I couldn't help but notice you speak Japanese earlier," said one of the workmen, an older electrician. "What are you here for?"

"A waste of time," replied Asuka.

"You here to see that _batakusai?"_ He paused, realizing immediately the awkward situation that he had created. "I mean no offence, of course, I would never–"

Shinji shot Asuka a worried look. He seemed to say, telepathically, _don't make a scene._ She didn't. Instead, she just said, "Don't worry about it. I'm only half _batakusai._ More like margarine."

The man laughed heartily, and then eyed them both. "You kids watch out. He's a snake, that man. And a real asshole too. But don't tell him I said that."

They waited a few more moments that felt like hours. In the office, Asuka could hear a faint, one-sided conversation in French, a language she _did_ speak.

" _-I told you already I'm busy. Can't come up at least for another month, maybe longer. I know she's sick, Claudette, but… yeah, I know. I know… About me? Why… Claudette I got people waiting. Important people… Yes for the court thing… Claudette, for Christ's sake calm down. Tabarnak. Okay. Okay. Goodbye. Okay…. Jesus."_ She heard a shuffling of chairs and out of the door emerged a squat, ugly little man with a bald head and a crooked nose. Asuka hated him already.

"Sorry about that," said the man in a slightly accented voice. "Personal stuff. You know how it is. I'm Rene."

Asuka stared daggers at him. Shinji introduced himself. "I-I'm Shinji Ik- I mean, Soryu. This is my wife–"

"Asuka," she said, not breaking the death stare. "Why did you drag us out here?"

"Because, to make a long story short, I need you," he said. "But there'll be time for explanations in a few minutes. Please, follow me," Reluctantly, she did.

"Hey, Victor," said Rene to the Japanese man who had spoken to them earlier. "Why are those wires exposed?"

"We haven't clipped them yet," he said. "We haven't put in the—"

"Well tape them out of the way at least. They're a hazard," said Rene.

"Right, boss," Then, in Japanese as he gestured derisively at Rene, "See, asshole."

The office itself was Spartan and messy, clearly still in the process of being set up. The walls were unpainted and there was no ornamentation aside from the boxes of files littered everywhere as well as law books haphazardly strewn in piles on the ground. The whole effect of the room was one of claustrophobia, and Asuka felt her heart begin to beat faster. _This is it._ She thought, _we're in it now. For real._

"I thought we'd keep today short," he said as he sat down in his chair, the same uncomfortable plastic chairs as in the waiting room. "I don't want to discuss the case itself, preliminary matters only. Is that alright with you?"

They said nothing.

" _Qui tacet concieret_. That's a fancy legal term that hasn't been true since the 1600s. But we'll go by it anyway, okay?" Rene was met with more silence. He drummed his fingers on his desk. "So. First. A bit about me. My name's Rene Bonaventure. I'm Chief Prosecutor for the ICC - the International Criminal Court. Before that I was first assistant prosecutor for the Rangon—"

"We don't care," said Asuka, brusquely. "Tell us what you want from us and let us go. We don't give a shit about your resume. You're a bloodsucking, suit-wearing lawyer that makes too much money and contributes nothing of value to society." Shinji looked mortified, but Asuka didn't much care.

Rene smiled thinly, clearly unamused. "Fine. Fair enough. I can sense some… hostility…" He pronounced it " _'ostility,"_ which annoyed Asuka. "and clearly some of it is warranted, although I'm not entirely convinced it's aimed at the right people. You've been hurt before–"

"Cut the bullshit _poor kid_ routine. You're UN, right?" Asked Asuka accusingly.

"Technically."

"I _hate_ the UN," she said, venom dripping from her voice, eyes fixed firmly on Rene's bald, disgusting pig-like face. "This is a sham and you know it. You want us to be your little prop so you can—"

Shinji had finally had enough. He laid a hand on her shoulder "Asuka–"

"Not again, Shinji, Jesus!" She yelled in Japanese. "Grow some fucking balls!"

"Don't talk like this in front of strangers, Asuka, please," he said, also in Japanese.

"You're taking his side. I fucking _knew_ you'd take his side!"

"Asuka–" Shinji had begun to tremble slightly. Asuka felt a pang of guilt, but she was too angry to calm herself.

Rene cradled his head in his hands pathetically as they bickered. "Listen," he said, icily, "I understand why you don't have any confidence in this process but I can _promise_ you this whole process is legitimate. You're not props. You're not tools. You're human beings… child soldiers, who had your lives–" Asuka watched as Rene struggled to find a softer synonym for _ruined. "Altered_ by people that exploited you. That didn't care about you. Well, _I_ care about you. I'm here to help you. I swear to God I'm here to help you. I don't want to make this painful for you. God knows you've been through enough already. But I need some cooperation."

"Or what?" Challenged Asuka.

"Or… nothing! The trial goes to shit and these murderers walk free. You're the only insiders at NERV we have. If you don't participate in this trial then we have shit. Jesus, don't you want to get back at these people?!" Now Rene was yelling, or at least struggling not to yell. It was then that Asuka noticed how dishevelled the man was. Clearly, he hadn't slept in a while.

In a small voice, Shinji said, "Not really."

"What?"

"We… at least, I think we just want to move on with our lives. Revenge doesn't really… appeal to us. Or at least to me. I think."

Rene smirked derisively. "Loyalty for the father. I get it." Asuka almost struck the man then and there.

Shinji's eyes fixed on Rene. His glare was icy, soul-piercing. "I have no loyalty to him," he said in a low, cutting voice. He glanced over at Asuka. "I think we're done here," he said.

 _We're a team._ "Yeah," she said, "we're done."

Rene sighed dejectedly. "I didn't want to do this," he said, "but I have to. I'm going to get the subpoena." He drummed his fingers on his desk and shrugged. "And I might have to request to have you detained, for your own safety."

Before Asuka could explode in anger, Shinji calmly said, "Get the subpoena. We'll fight it. Let's go, Asuka." And he walked out.

Asuka was trembling as she got up to follow him. She lingered at the doorway for a brief moment. "Have you ever been to war, Mr. Bonaventure?" She didn't turn to face him.

"No," said a tired and defeated voice, "but I've been to warzones."

"Ever killed anyone?" She asked.

"No."

"Well I have," she said, turning to face him. She fixed her eyes on his. _"_ _Si tu_ _lui_ _blessera_ , _je_ _te tue_." Rene said nothing as she walked out of the room.

* * *

To Asuka's annoyance, they had to sleep another night at the hotel. The riots had been worse than expected. Although their house was untouched, apparently, someone had been lynched right next door. Asuka's only thought at hearing the news was _well, I'm glad we brought the Mercedes with us._

There were no night-time visitors tonight. She lay curled up, still wide awake, relatively comfortably with Shinji at her side. He had been well rewarded for his show of bravery. And yet, from a strategic point of view, Asuka knew they had screwed up royally. Now, they were in a protracted fight with a hostile force. If there ever was any hope of getting through this relatively easily, that was gone now.

Weirdly enough, the emptiness inside her seemed a little less harrowing now. In a strange sense, she had been given purpose again. An external threat to distract her from her internal tormentors. _It's sad,_ she thought. _If I can't destroy someone else, I'll only destroy myself._

The hotel phone rang. Shinji groggily stirred and reached for the phone but Asuka snapped it up first.

"It's three in the morning," she said. "What do you want?"

"Listen." She recognized that voice. It was Rene. "Something came up. Something big. I have a deal to propose."

* * *

 **ONE WEEK EARLIER, LCL CONTAINMENT ZONE 232, THE SEA OF JAPAN**

The PT boat bobbed aimless against the thick red sea, itself lifeless in a place where nothing could live. The sky was pink, barren and scarred. Blood rained constantly. This was hell. This was Japan.

Satoshi Minekazi sat staring at his screen aimlessly. This is what he had done for the past two-and-a-half weeks, since the last rescue. It wasn't always like this. In the early days the seas were packed with recent arrivals of all ages that had to be scooped out, suctioned, and ferried to shore. In the early days, Satoshi scarcely was able to take a break. Then it slowed to a steady pace. Then a slump. Then a trickle. Then… nothing.

 _Maybe the sea's out of souls_. He thought. But that couldn't be true. It was as red and thick as ever. _Maybe they just don't want to come back._ That was what people said, anyway, as if choice had anything to do with it. It made some level of intuitive sense. If it was true, Satoshi didn't blame them.

"Drainage system's clogged again," said Aoi Fubuke, a doctor ten years Satoshi's junior. "Clots, I think. You wanna clear it?"

"I just cleared it yesterday!" He complained. "Did Taro forget to put in the damn ozone? Why don't you do it?"

"I'm a doctor. You're an engineer."

"Goddamn it," said Satoshi as he got up to grab his tools.

His monitor started beeping plaintively.

"What the hell?" Said Aoi. "Is that–"

"Looks like we got vibrations at buoy 39932. That's in our quadrant."

"Did another fish wander in past the netting?"

"Nah, too big and it's on the surface," said Satoshi. "Could be real."

"Blood-type?"

"Uh…." Satoshi clicked on the analyzer. "Blue. It's human."

"Oh shit!" Said Aoi excitedly, "I almost forgot how this works!"

"No kidding," said Satoshi as he grabbed his walkie-talky to call it in. As soon as he did, they sped off, leaving a trail of blood in their wake.

They arrived just three minutes later. There were still a lot of boats out on the water, so quadrant sizes were relatively small. Time was of the essence in operations like this. They had to get there quick or they would have nothing to haul out of the water but a corpse.

Satoshi ran up to the deck to get a view of what was going on. When he got there, they were already hauling up the Returned with the modified fishing nets that they used. That was a good sign. Even though the sea was much warmer than it was before it became inundated with LCL, it was still possible to get hypothermia.

"Female," said Eito, an orderly. "Early to late 20s." She was pretty, well-endowed and relatively tall, with hair so dark it looked almost purple. Satoshi had seen many naked women in the course of his career, but this was one of the better ones.

"Conscious?" Asked Aoi, who had followed him.

"No," he said.

"Airways?"

"Obstructed," he said. "Breathing's ragged."

"Shit. Okay," said Aoi. "Lay her on the gurney. I need suction."

Everyone was all-business now. Although they had done this thousands of times, there was a certain air of urgency with every Returnee. Some had choked to death on LCL before, others simply never woke up. Aoi shoved a tube down the Returnee's throat as delicately as she could and suctioned out the LCL that had built up inside of her airways.

The Returnee began to cough.

"Penlight," said Aoi. She flashed it in the Returnee's eyes. "She's responsive." She turned to face the Returnee. "Hello? Can you hear me?"

"Shinji…" muttered the returnee, before another coughing fit. Her chest heaved up and down in great spasms. Her hands clawed at the deck. Finally her breathing slowed, coming ragged but in regular intervals.

"You're on a boat," said Aoi, her voice loud and assertive. "Can you remember what happened?"

"I don't… I…" the woman's glassy eyes were filled with panic. This was rare. Usually, Returnees had a sense of blissful lethargy when they were fresh out of the water, until they realized the gravity of the situation. _That_ was when the panic set in.

"What's your name?" said Aoi, never once breaking her gaze with the woman.

The woman hesitated for a moment, her eyes darting back and forth. Then she calmed down. Her body relaxed. Her eyes, now clear, fixed themselves on Satoshi. Fully lucid, the woman said "Misato Katsuragi."

* * *

[AUTHOR'S NOTE:]

 _Wow, it sure has been awhile hasn't it? Getting this chapter out has been… difficult, to say the least. Almost a year ago, I wrote an entire unreleased chapter that I didn't think was good enough to be released. It serves as the basis for the next chapter, which will probably be OC centric (sorry!) As I was trying to flesh that out, I realized "these people don't want an OC chapter, nobody likes OC chapters." I also realized that "wow, plot wise not a lot has happened yet._

 _So I set out to write this chapter to start setting things in motion. I wrote most of it almost a year ago, and then the technical problems started. I lost the file somehow. Then I rewrote the whole chapter, thensomehow, without even looking for it, I found the old chapter. I then merged the two chapters together and finally was able to finish the damn thing. Is that an excuse? Yes. Is it a good excuse? No. I also procrastinated a lot. I felt like I had lost a sense of the characters. For a while everything I wrote seemed OOC. And in a sense it was, because I wasn't being inventive, I was trying to rewrite a chapter from memory. Sad! (Speaking of which, I feel I should mention, Rick Ranger is NOT based on the current president… but he IS based on someone that is, by some prophetic fluke, in his cabinet. A certain "Mad Dog.") Finding the chapter breathed new life into me. Suddenly, I wasn't writing uphill anymore. The last two scenes were able to be written in one night as a result._

 _Now, brass tacks time. I know this story has long gaps in between chapters. You've all been VERY patient, almost too damn patient. I want you all to know that this story should NEVER EVER be considered abandoned. New chapters will always come out eventually until this thing is done._

 _In any case, despite the long, hellish road that this chapter has taken, I'm actually very happy with the results of it. It feels damn good to upload something again. Hopefully, the next wait won't be nearly as long._

 _Oh, one more thing - the French said by Asuka translates, I hope, to "If you hurt him, I'll kill you." I don't speak French, and even though my source is a little better than Google Translate, I am still not 100% confident in the translation. If you speak French and think you have a better translation, please by all means send me a message._


End file.
